Pieces of paper are everywhere. Have you noticed? Notes, receipts, wrappers, drawings. I pick them up to see what people have to say, what they buy. The drawing of a pink cat lays face up on the sidewalk. A child did this: whiskers, ears, no body. Maybe it was a gift for someone. A gift someone dropped. And now after a day of rain, it’s skin has become translucent and torn; a brown foot print bars it like a cell.
I picked up a note off the rail, folded in irregular squares. The right edge torn haphazardly out of a small notebook. Medicina, it says, it shaky black ink. Then under that:
Nikzon
Masti cable (one or two words, I’m not sure)
Kifen
What did I learn from god google? Nikozon is a type of Mexican hemorrhoid medicine. Masticable is spanish for chewing (chewable Nikzon tablets?) and Kifen, I have no idea. Someone’s name? A doctor?
I hope this person remembers what they need.
There’s spit all over the sidewalk, by the bus stop, random patters of white bubbles littered like bird shit. I watch people walk and feel the heaviness of my body. The sore legs and arms, the books in my bag. I see a woman swinging her arms across the street and realize that at one point in our existence this was the only way we moved – in our bodies. There were no plans or cars or bikes. There were no segways or scooters or trains. The fastest we could ever go was run.
A cop car pulls up to the light. All it took to get here was someone wanting to go faster than they ever could before. Then bikes and cars and planes and bullet trains were born. Is there a limit to our speed? Will the force of our lives take us farther and farther away from our bodies?
My light is green. I walk among the cars, follow the blinking bald man – my right away, my signal to move – closing the distance between my destination and the means it took to get here.
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