He comes in every Wednesday afternoon and sits in front of the counter for about an hour. He’s an artist. I can tell by the way his dark eyes take in everything around him, including me. I wonder, has he memorized every line of my face, every freckle of my skin as I have of his?
He leaves his sketchbook behind one day. I can’t resist, I wait for him to leave and seize it; but, inside, I don’t find a masterful portrait of myself, just a bundle of incomplete Tuesday crossword puzzles. He was not an artist after all.
City. River. Tree. 