Do you remember

Do you remember in greeting cards that played a melody, there would be a little slip of paper inserted into the mechanism, to prevent the card from playing itself out while still on display? From people opening it over and over?

Well, I was falling asleep last night and it occurred to me that my nightguard is like that little piece of paper. And it made no sense and also it felt brilliant and I got up and went to the next room where my phone was charging and wrote it down. Because every time this happens and I tell myself I'll remember it the next day, I don't.

*

Walking home from early voting at the Watsessing Park Community Center, a guy on one of those foreshortened electric scooters, knees to his chin, yelled out something as he approached me. I looked up, and he yelled out, "What, you don't have a name?"

Couldn't stop thinking about that.

On the #72, when I tapped my card to pay the fare, the driver asked me where I'm going, which took me by surprise even though the driver on the way down had asked me the same thing, and come to think of it, so had the drivers the other three or five times I've taken the bus in Jersey.

The first time it happened, I thought: Do I look lost? Is he skeptical I'm on the right bus?

Now I realized: he's asking so as to enter which zone I'm traveling to, to charge me the right fare.

Zones aren't a thing in NYC.

Got home and saw the bottle of red wine that's been knocking about the kitchen for weeks, and before I even took off my shoes, I took a photo of it and posted it up my neighborhood WhatsApp group. Within seconds it was spoken for.

The thrill I get from giving something away, is maybe what other people feel when they steal something?

*

Like everything else, that red has a backstory.

A few weeks ago on a Friday night I got off the train in Upper Montclair. I was in the front of the train, so I walked down Lorraine instead of my usual Bellevue.

On the sidewalk just outside the parking lot, there was a handful of credit cards. I picked them up and googled the cardholder name, a person and a business in a neighboring town, easy to find. I emailed them.

"I found your cards, please get in touch."

I was still walking when my phone rang, it was a woman from the old country, which I half-expected based on her name and the photo on her website, it was like speaking to my mother and my mother-in-law in one voice.

I'd only been home a few minutes when she pulled up, with her husband driving, their dog in the backseat. I gave her the cards, she gave me a bottle of red.

"It's not necessary," I said, "keep it."

"No," she said, "you don't understand, no one does this, it's so kind."

But it had happened to me in Brooklyn once.

NEWSY STUFF

My story, "Junco and Wolf," has been published in A Public Space No. 33! I hope you love reading it, as much as I loved writing it.

A Public Space is an independent nonprofit publisher of an eponymous award-winning literary, arts, and culture magazine, and A Public Space Books. Under the direction of founding editor Brigid Hughes since 2006, it has been their mission to seek out overlooked and unclassifiable work, and to publish writing from beyond established confines.

If you just want to get issue No. 33: a digital copy is just $9, a print copy is $15. For $21 you get both! 

Divinity School • a letter every Sunday at sunset • if you’re always looking, after some time you’ll have seen