The coffee is too hot, a sharp protest against my tongue that grounds me instantly in the sensation of pain and temperature. It burns just enough to make me stop thinking about the river, or the shadows, or the invisible threads connecting things I used to believe in. I drink it anyway. The bitterness coats my palate, simple and unadorned. No aftertaste of ozone. No whisper of a key turning in a lock that isn’t there. Just coffee beans ground by machines, water heated by gas, served in paper cups on a street corner where people buy what they need to keep going until night turns to dawn.

I finish the last drop and crush the cup in my hand, the cardboard crumbling into jagged confetti at my feet. A stray cat wanders through the pile of debris, sniffing curiously before darting away into an alleyway. I watch it go, feeling a strange kinship with its movement—impulsive, necessary, entirely unburdened by the need for meaning or pattern recognition.

The wind has died down completely now. The city holds its breath in that quiet way cities only know how to do after midnight when the rush hour traffic has thinned out and the last streetlights flicker off one by one. I zip up my coat, pulling the collar tight against the chill. My pockets feel heavy with things that are just objects: a notebook full of blank pages, coins that are just currency, a newspaper that contains news no one asked for but will read anyway when they’re ready.

I start walking back toward the subway entrance, not because I have to go home tonight, but because it feels like the right thing to do. There’s nowhere else to be where the world doesn’t try to tell me what to see. The tunnel mouth yawns before me, dark and inviting. No glowing symbols pulse from the darkness this time. Just shadows. And that seems sufficient.

As I step inside, the automatic doors slide open with their familiar hydraulic sigh, a sound so mundane it almost makes my stomach turn with its ordinariness. The fluorescent lights buzz to life overhead, humming a steady, electric C-major chord that doesn’t resolve into anything strange or dissonant. Just noise. Useful, background noise.

I wait for the train. It arrives exactly on time, its doors opening with a precise click-clack sequence that feels like clockwork rather than chaos. People board, filling the car with their own separate, parallel lives. I find a spot near the front and press my back against the cool metal wall. The train lurches forward, picking up speed until we are once again buried in the earth’s underbelly, surrounded by light that cuts through darkness but creates no shapes in between.

And as the tunnel rushes past, I realize something else.

The rhythm of the train isn’t just a sound anymore; it’s a metronome for a life I’ve been trying to tune. Every second tick marks a moment where nothing magical happens and everything is exactly as it should be. The wheels on the rails don’t speak riddles. The brakes don’t whisper secrets. They simply stop us, slow us down, move us forward, allowing the world outside to continue turning while we ride along for the journey.

I close my eyes and let the vibration travel through me again, not as a signal from somewhere else, but just as feeling in this body. This body that is tired. This body that is warm from coffee and chestnuts and movement. This body that exists right here, right now, without needing permission to be real.

When the train stops at the next station, I stand up slowly, letting the shift in gravity remind me of where my feet are planted. The doors slide open, and I step out onto the platform, ready to walk back into the ordinary world one more time tomorrow morning when the sun hits my face warm and heavy again.

Until then, I just breathe. In. Out. Step forward.