The coffee shop closed early today—something about a broken water heater. I'd been sitting there for two hours, watching a man argue with his reflection in the window. Not literally, but the way he kept adjusting his collar, practicing different expressions. Each one more unconvincing than the last.
I wrote it down: A man rehearsing sincerity in glass.
Later, walking home through the park, I found a child's mitten hanging from a fence post. Red, small enough for a five-year-old. Someone had placed it there deliberately, the universal signal: I am lost, please find me. But it had been raining. The mitten was soaked through, sagging.