I keep forgetting to write. But not exactly forgetting. Because my voice my voice my voice keeps getting jammed in all these foreign frequencies. And I don’t remember how to speak outside code. Once upon a time, I knew the translation. Ways to be understood on the fuzziest line. Crisp diction and garbled messages repeating and repeating on remote towers. The distinction between here and there lost in several fractions of a second. We never knew how to compensate for the delay, and sound has never yet turned a corner without help. We were alone in static, in the hiss of a lost line. Clipped click of radio pulse.

10-4, 10-35. Control, out.

The soundtrack bubbles against a crush of bodies. Recorded piano glides between legs and sashays around hips; the silent clip of hard soles against harder concrete outside this microcosm on wires. We are all bound to this route. Lurching to predestined stops. Except when our our minds are overwhelmed with everything we’ve accepted. And we change the sign to flash SORRY, FULL. But not soon enough. Each thought grazes the knees of another, pressed thigh to thigh and arm to arm. Careful never to make eye contact, except in the briefest moments when your eyes make sense to mine.

These memories wander long. Time as convoluted as a cerebral cortex. Months still shiny under all the dust. Polished too smooth from too much tumbling. Does she remember who I turned out to be?

This intersection is busy. Sodium streetlights almost irrelevant in the steady pulse of traffic. North-south, then east-west. Right angles of the compass. Pushing past and past. And in this whoosh and murmur of traffic, the song of this city pulls at my toes, and each mouthful of morning lingers on my tongue.

The bus is half dim. All lit up at the back where blue-collar boys lurch in and out of sleep to the rhythm of new passengers. I’m the stranger in this seat. They’ve all taken this route before, and the slow exhale of a work-week condenses into chatter. We’re all on our way to a Friday morning, for whatever it means, whatever it’s worth. My hearing sidles into the next conversation and curls with a cozy grin against a stranger’s voice.

Meditation, following meandering paths, seems appropriate now. Escaping the weight of city life and people. Finding a place for myself among silences and snowflakes. I wrap myself in solitude. Slip past midnight into this new year.

I came home with only Fiesta Red ink for my fountain pen. Feeling quiet and expansive. Shifting into this other self. Who is breathing gently into the darkness of mid-December, thrilled by every string of Christmas lights.