My grandfather had deep folds reaching from his nose to the corners of his unsmiling mouth. You kids are like grass, he often said. All over, fast growing, and needing a good cut every once in a while. I live in a city now, where lawns are scarce.
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My landlord enters my apartment sometimes when I am out, without notice. The deadbolt gives him away. And his pointy, villainous teeth.
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Yesterday I unlocked my mailbox to find a coffee cup half-full that I’d stashed there days ago on my way out with the dog. Today there’s no coffee, only a postcard with a picture Pelle drew of a cup unlike any I own.
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The stained-glass decal above the porch door fooled me when I rented the apartment. Petals on water. Eventually I noticed a corner lifting.
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Smile inflation at Cloud Gate: The effect by which one person smiles a normal amount in photographs but alongside bigger smilers it looks like a scowl.
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Chicago apartments: One long hallway alights with the morning sun, framed by the porch door window. Dust, dander, fibers, hair.
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Leaning against his shopping cart, the can man shouts to me from the street: Laaaaady! The recycling bin clamors in my hands as I run down the stairs. I’m like a kid again, running toward an ice cream truck with quarters in my pocket.
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A man, stalky with a white beard, circles the bar in the evening, Rolling Rock in hand, diverted only by the occasional urge to queue a TouchTunes song.
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The man’s hair and beard are white. How is it that I can tell they were once red? His red cheeks, of course.
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’80s New Wave pours from the bar. A woman I don’t know and I are alone on the patio outside—her swaying, me smoking. I distance myself but nevertheless she shouts to me the names of each song. My brain is all scrambled! she also shouts. Brain lesions! I can’t remember anything. My brain is all scrambled. Except for this.
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The bartender comped our table a pitcher sometimes but always too late, when we could stomach not one sip more. He was stabbed by a teenager walking home one night, at the corner of 49th and Greenwood, while a pitcher at the far end of our table staled.
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My neighbor was fined $250 for tossing feed from his balcony every morning, exacerbating local rodent infestations. He contested, arguing that the feed was meant not for the rodents but for the pigeons, whom he knows by name.
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Out of sight out of mind: the bowl of fruit in the corner. Is it breeding flies?
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Four old men frequent the cinema where I rip tickets. They always sit in the fourth row against the aisle. As soon as the lights brighten after the credits, they complain. Tonight’s lead? One-note!
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I stood first in the bathroom queue when a woman slipped out of a stall wearing a sly grin as if she’d left behind a prank. I looked hopefully into the toilet bowl when it was my turn. Nothing.
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On the red line at night, two passengers nod off: to my left, a man opening a Snickers; through the cab window, a woman rolling a cigarette. I am tired, too.
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My neighbors, famous bike thieves, have limp faces and few teeth. He stops at the vestibule door, she continues through into the cold, glassy evening. I really hope she has her gloves, he says quietly, but not to me.
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Sophie says our fish has scoliosis, that he swims poorly. I don’t understand, I say. He was the most lively one at the store, he swam the most. She brings a finger to her chin, thoughtful. Then says, I guess flailing looks a lot like swimming in a tank that small.
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Friday night two women circled each other around a parked car yelling and flicking their knife blades. They wore matching outfits.
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Thirteen condo buildings broke ground in Bronzeville last week. Responding to residents’ concerns, the developer said, No, the properties are not identical! They only appear so from the outside!
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Sophie thrifts in Little Village most weekends. She brings home plastic statuettes, broken office chairs, sneakers, shell-shaped bowls, elephant bookends, radios, a painting of Abraham Lincoln. Look, she says, laying them one by one on the kitchen counter. Look how beautiful.
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The man on the train across from me was a doctoral student when I was an undergraduate a decade ago. He is bald now and scribbling annotations into a book. His scribbling face is a wince and he is still a doctoral student.
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Two Polish brothers construct a three-flat outside my window. Progress is slow; all day they yell in mutual aggravation. Meanwhile, a third man visits alone at night. Unfolds a camping chair inside the empty frame, plonks himself down, and cracks a beer.
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The dog: a pastry. Once, another dog partook—chawed her neck, stomach, spinal vessel. She walks calmly under the trees today. A leaf falls, settles on her fur. She stops; looks up at me, trusting that I’ll remove it. I do. I can’t look at her without remembering how tired she looked when she was dying.
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Behind her balcony dripping with polyester morning glories, my spying neighbor is a smidgen of motion disrupting the curtain.
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A woman nods asleep on the train, malt liquor in a paper bag at her feet. It falls, spills. Oops, she tells me. I smile. Oh good, she tells me—it didn’t spill on you. Hearing this, a woman a few seats down picks up her purse from the floor. She examines it (sopping), then me, galled.
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There is a new storefront on the block, the G-Spot Diner. With a large sign that reads Coming Soon!
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A robin thatched a nest under the porch before true spring. Though she warmed it through rain and snow, I never spotted nestlings. It is summer now; she dives through the sprinkler when I turn the spigot.
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A man on the train wears sandals. In order of large to small: second toe, first toe, pinky toe, third toe, ring toe.
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My elderly neighbor boasts about her upcoming surgery. They’ll start at my temples… she says, dragging a finger across her face. Then cut around my ears. And nick under my chin, to tidy up my neck. She sticks out her tongue and starts gagging, as if being cut open right here and now.
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In Pelle’s kitchen, no talk feels very urgent. His ficus just put out a new leaf. Oh, and melon season’s coming. So we look out the window at someone walking through the plaza with flowers in one hand and a grocery bag in the other. The bag splits, glass breaks. Spooked, the kettle screams.
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Past my window, a man writhes and screams in the alleyway. Sir! I call. Do you need help? He looks up at me. Rises from the pavement, waves, and walks breezily into the setting sun.
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The train is behind schedule and rattling side to side for speed. A woman in businesswear pulls from her pouch a pencil, a compact mirror. Presses tip to brow, puff to cheeks—and swiftly. She doesn’t miss.
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May 31, 2020: When teenagers looted 47th, I watched from my window as they hauled boxes out of J Bees Sportswear. Brand new shoes littered the neighborhood for weeks. The ugly ones.
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At eight in the morning a mother and her young son board the train. The mother reaches into her purse, removes a cheeseburger, bites into it. The boy waits proudly for my expression—envy!
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A neighbor walks our building’s hallway in the afternoons, fingering the wall and talking to himself. I am healthy, he says. Then louder: I am healthy. I am healthy!
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I purchased a bundle of peonies to mark a monumental moment in my life. Then attended to them patiently at the kitchen table only to watch them blight before they bloomed.
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Often I will adjust items around our apartment—a tray sticking off the table, a picture frame halfway off the shelf, a knife balanced on the edge of the counter—only to find out that Sophie has placed them that way specifically.
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A teenager and I disembark the same train at night from different cars. We descend the steps, her before me, but she stops dead before the turnstiles. She looks at me; a figure lies in a puddle of piss. Her look is like a plea and I miss my little sister.
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Promontory Point: Sophie sits on the rocks, dangling her feet in the water. I look away from her at the sound of a child’s cry then hear behind me the faintest whoosh. Her head is floating away.