Somehow the image of the small rat methodically chewing the
face off the bigger, dead rat, among the thick layer of dirt
covering the subway tracks evenly, seemed very much in place
in a city like New York, and I spent the 20 minutes during
which the train was typically delayed staring at it with a
mixture of fascination and nausea. The desperate urge to
share the lyrical macabreness of the situation with someone
and the failure to the depart from the safety zone of my
iPod and do so were equally in place, and so me and the rat
had 20 minutes of relative intimacy. When I next happened to
that spot they were both gone and the tracks were flooded.

I arrived early and continued on to the park, half a block
further. It was one of the first beautiful days of spring
and feeling a little weary I sat on a bench in the warm
embrace of the sun and the cool caress of the wind, and
balanced between these two rivaling lovers I dozed off
sitting like that, only to wake up a few minutes later to a
small poodle thoroughly sniffing my leg and it's owner
pretending the whole situation is awfully cute and not
awkward at all. My cell phone was supposed to wake me up but
didn't, and it was time to go. I acknowledged the cuteness
with a haphazard  smile and terminated the awkwardness with
leaving. The only thing that prevented me from feeling like
a homeless person was the private knowledge that my laptop
is in my beg.