1.

I don't talk as much as I used to.
Conversations are diluted by long pauses that slither at my feet while I think of how to say these things.
Things that don't need to be said.
Things both of us could do without.

I stay inside my room. I walk over to the window and press my nose against the glass, cold and invisible. The rain falls at my face and gets trapped in the holes in the window screen.
My throat itches and I try to scratch it from the inside, the way my mother taught me.

Later I walk to the bus stop, and I smile at the same guy I've smiled at twice already.
He's always finishing a cigarette; I'm always running late.
But sometimes at 3:45, between the Avenues, we smile.