No one gives

“Do you have hummingbird feeders?” I ask at the hardware store in town.

“Do we have hummingbird feeders? What do you think this is, a hardware store?” says the man behind the counter.

He leads me down the aisle to the hummingbird feeders. They have two. Neither is the one my birder friend recommends, but it’ll do. It's red.

A starter feeder.

*

Somewhere between Bryant Park and Broadway-Lafayette, a man in a pink rain parka comes through the F train asking for money. He kneels on the floor, puts his cap on the floor. He’s on the far side of pleading and beseeching, he's angry. No one gives.

He gets up, storms out, shouting, “I hope this brings you joy.”

Between Broadway-Laf and York Street, he makes a second pass, complaining that people gave someone else twenties but him nothing? — I don’t catch all he says.

“You should be nicer,” a woman tells him gently. I expect him to lash out.

Instead he says quietly, “When I’m nice, I get hurt.”

And he keeps walking through to the next car.

A group of dancers board at the next stop. Music, high energy. They dance. One of them props his sneaker on the metal bar running parallel to the ceiling, taps it so that it drops neatly onto his waiting foot.

I avert my eyes, I feel guilty watching if I don't have money to give.

“Fill the cap fill the cap fill the cap,” the guys chant as they move through the car.

As I’m getting off at York Street, I notice an unopened bottle of water, a quart of strawberries on the floor of the train car, near where the man asking for money had been kneeling. Had he been given them — forgotten them?

*

I walk for an hour in the steady rain in red Campers, no socks.

When I was a kid, I thought lawn signs with home improvement information — like XYZ Roofing or PQR Plumbing — meant that the contractor lived there. Was advertising his business.

Now I know the signs mean the contractor did work at that house. And the College Hunks don’t live on my block, they just hauled some junk for those people.

When I come home my feet are red. Two showers later they are a little less red, but still red.

The next day I show my sister my feet.

“I think there’s only one solution,” I say.

“Time?” she says.

“Time.”

All over Manhattan, Alex wants to know if you need help moving something heavy.

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

YOU’RE INVITED!

Wednesday, September 17 @ 7 PM
As A Public Space Fellow, I will be reading and participating in a panel discussion at Unnameable Books, 615 Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn. This event is part of the 2025 Brooklyn Book Festival.

I’ll be reading from my story, JUNCO & WOLF, which will appear in the winter issue of A Public Space. This story is inspired by my year studying in Moscow. No one dies in this story.