I watch a middle aged man's bicep flex and burn as he picks up a large piece of construction material and produces lactic acid. I think of the muscle. I just walked fourteen blocks. Our appointments, our adjustments, the way we move ourselves through timelessness.

The man who found animals walked with his cat perched on his head like the lions that guard the great Chinese restaurants. He walked quickly enough to quell question and stroked his cat on the tail. He stopped to wave to a friend or spectator and said, I never knew there was more to life than food, until I found where the food comes from.

from budapest

men laugh and become boys, women bare their stomachs and their bras

everyone goes for another drink

men laugh like wolves and pick their scabs, women scream sex even when they are sleeping

people are places, we are islands or we are boats

On a train platform filled with men and women in dark suits, a young girl without a suitcase or briefcase stands in bright colors. She is waiting for the train just a little bit closer to the edge than everyone else.

“Why do you keep doing that?” a woman in navy asks a man in charcoal grey, because he keeps looking up at the sky nervously. “Do you think it's going to rain?”

He tells her, “I just like to know it's still here, it's still big, and it's not burning.”

A page drops from the young girl's notebook and as she bends towards the track to pick it up, the train starts coming and it looks as if it will kill her. She straightens up exactly as the train races in. They look at her, but she knows once they all get seated she will be less of a spectacle. “I could never be a businesswoman,” she thinks, “too much black.”

When the train gets going and she's asked for her ticket, she hands hers to the conductor and apologizes for it having already been torn. He says thank you with loud confidence and smiles widely for her. She is looking out the window. She thinks, “The world's become so small I don't think I'd get lost if I tried.”