In the morning you lean against the mailbox and it rocks, loose in its concrete cradle. Perhaps you drop your rent check in it, scribbled in pink ink, and think of it fluttering to the middle of the earth, or to a mail hub several counties away, passing hand
over calloused hand.
Later you lean over the curb, craning. Like ships in the night they come, flashing their yellow lights in the cold, moist air, and
you risk life and limb sometimes, don’t you, dashing across several lanes of grumpy traffic to catch one. The honks make you feel reckless, and make the relief of your eventual spot in the aisle next to a woman with orange lipstick who insists upon telling you of her childhood in South Carolina all the
more warm and sweet.
There are no super-accelerated metal tubes here, no hollow, underground passageways. There are no tokens or tickets, no labyrinth, no color-coding. It’s all above ground here, up front, unreliable
paper legends and inconsistency, and you like it that way even as you complain.