I'm nodding, nodding. with every blink subway stops pass and go.

I get out of the stop into the misting rain, above ground, flatbush and 6th ave, where the twin street grids of park slope and prospect heights fold over. there's nobody around, really, save for a woman in her 50s, waiting at the other crosswalk, who swivels her head slightly to glance at me briefly. a simple reflex movement. I do the same thing. the streets are slick and glow with elliptical shapes shining green, red, yellow.

I walk to my bike that I've locked up since this morning. it's dripping with rainwater and ice-cold to the touch. I feel suddenly and intensely apologetic, and I find myself saying, I'm sorry, out loud, in the cold night air. suddenly-autumn air.

I bike home slowly, on the sidewalk, lights flashing. on the way it occurs to me that if there is a timbre of my life lately, if I could hit it with a thin metal rod and listen to it reverberate, that it would be the quality of subway stations late at night. something of the shared experience of tiredness. ten people in a subway car, I'm trying to read about the eighteenth-century picturesque in architecture but my mind's drifting, vacant. the books are on: free translator, thirty incoming. I'm falling asleep; so is everybody else. within this space there is a sense of quiet, calm, a sense of understanding, and I don't feel lonely, or impatient, just here, and I remind myself that it is good to see this city, good to see it through and through, broadway's golden rivulets, brooklyn's large skies.

there's this spot on the way home from the brooklyn museum 2 stop that passes washington ave, and every time I cross the street I turn my head left and look over, and the streets align just enough that I can see all the way to the chrysler building, shining in midtown where-I-just-was, and it's nice. it's precious, this space is precious, this lofted bed is precious, and I fall asleep with this.