＃１

The taxi window fogs with quiltwork condensation, each streak a memory of passengers tracing fingertips across the glass — all finding themselves in the purgatory of transit, grasping, none succeeding.

Still, you try to articulate something. But every word proves a misstep: a demarcation of nothing more than shadow, whisking the casting object away the moment you turn to face it. For all your silent speechmaking, you remain utterly mute.

The window mists back over, indifferent to your defeat. It scarcely bothers to preserve your frosted palmprint, which vaguely irritates you — but only for a moment, before the cabbie asks for thirty thirty-five and you clamber out into the tulip dawn.