Street Car I

What she loved about the city ultimately was the people. They were so exquisitely stunningly broken - fragile as mismatched tea cups whose chipped saucers had gone missing. She moved freely about them - at once pardoned by their vulnerability and welcomed by their need. She could come undone in the city without notice - unspool while walking the dog or combust while riding the escalator in the subway and none of the cups would rattle or chatter and no one would mind. If they talked, it would be about something other than the hem of her skirt, the pimple on her chin or the way her gray hairs jutted out like wayward fishing lines trying to catch a herring from the shoulder of a passerby. She was simultaneously anonymous and absolutely essential. When she smiled, it mattered. It almost always mattered. And when she looked hard upon the man with the metal lunch box and the handsome young man hobbling and balding from chemotherapy she could say with her eyes I know and I send you blessings and feel larger than she was.