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18 Edge Subway doors sever here from there. Floors slick with rain and gutter dirt. Old ladies gather their grimy coattails as they collapse into seats. He leans too near the door, positioned beneath a dented speaker that blasts the conductor’s garbled speech. The clutched white cane and peculiar slant of his head, like a bird hearing a child’s whistle, are the only clues to his precipice. Each day, he listens for the incantation, Broadway, transfer to the A, C, and E trains, before he rushes the door, straight to the cold assurance of tile wall. I watch him rearrange himself, as the train pulls from the station, gusts stirring gutted newsprint at his feet. Some mornings, I stand behind him on the F train to Manhattan. I imagine helping him get off at the correct station without sudden panic at the edge of the platform, delivering him into his day. I imagine the scent of his shampoo 19 as I whisper into his neat pink ear, the gentle scratch of wool as I grasp his elbow, place my hand on the flat expanse of his lower back. And then later, what he might utter as we make love, what sounds describe a soft country suited to the blind, filled with easily mapped terrain, and no dangerous edges. ...

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