“Once the train pulls away the market is quiet for nearly an hour. I dust wine bottles and drink coffee alone. I hold a mug in both hands until my warmth takes all its warmth away. I think about the boy with the dead mother. I think about how we do that, how our bodies pull the heat from other objects until those objects are cold. The adiabatic cooling of touch, of a substance decreased as it does work on its surroundings. And imagine, how hot the liquid must feel to the air.

I bite my lips until they are hard and ridged on the inside like wet dunes at low tide.

And then there is my watch, and the wind, which I do and don’t ignore.”