You walk to the train. Above ground, a billboard cycles through three ads: a perfume that smells like “nothing you’ve ever known,” a bank that promises to treat you like a person (as if persons are what they want), and a streaming series about a detective who solves murders by feeling the emotions of the victims. You think about that for a moment — the privatization of empathy — and then the train arrives, and you forget.
At 11:47 PM, you turn off the light. The city does not turn off with you. Outside, sirens practice their scales. A couple argues on the sidewalk — something about a key, something about a text you will never read. A train passes three blocks away, full of people returning from places you will never go. You lie in the dark and try to remember the last time you were truly aware. Not of your phone. Not of your to-do list. Not of the news. But aware — fully, stupidly, painfully aware — of something small. A crack in a wall. A stranger’s laugh. The way light pools on a wet street after rain. unaware in the city v45
Tomorrow, the barista will hand you a flat white. The train will brake. The pigeon will not care. But maybe — just maybe — you will notice the thing you almost noticed today. The child at the window. The blue in the sky. The man on the milk crate, whose sign now reads, “Still unaware. Still here. Still asking.” You walk to the train