How to Be Findable (in a City that Forgets You)

First, admit the body spoils without witnesses.
Milk turns; peaches turn; you turn—unwitnessed.

Go where the hands have errands, not wishes.
Soil refusing seed; a sink of plates.
Hold a trowel, a whisk, a socket set—
things that click when two have met.

Do not audition—convene.
“Thursday, 6:10, the café of steam and keys.”
Offer the mercy of an end-time.
One lap of the block; a gripe each.

Bring proofs and permissions, nothing grand:
a bruised tangerine, a borrowed hand.
Let care rehearse on a toy-stage plan—
call the trade even, person to person.

Drop the questionnaire; let watching lead:
they tip for spilled water; their listening
lands like bread you tear—soft, warm, aware.

Accept the asymmetry; don’t keep score.
You text first often, then again, then more.
Counting won’t keep it alive;
love is a bus; wait at the stop.

Err on the side of errands.
Stand with them under a blistered display while the delay lengthens and the platform fogs.
Argue where north is; misread the maps.
Learn to be boring together, like furniture.
Hold. Ready and useful when outages stir,
rain mapping pavements in patient seams,
the two of you steady as shopfront beams.

Bring thorns and name them without defense:
“I go weird at parties,” plain present tense.
Lay them out; see who reaches the glass—
truth on the table, the small tests passed.

Remember the underworld isn’t myth; it’s Tuesday.
Carry oranges. Sit with the mess in the doorway.
Switch off the lamp; make dens from coats; keep company—
a bus receipt, its ink run into rain-rivery.
Be the pair with the map no one can read,
keeping the page though no one agreed.

But listen—
friendship isn’t grooming under show lights’ fizz.
It’s a rite rehearsed in ruins where,
for a moment, the candles manage air.
Call the other “you,” but sometimes know
something like a friend wears their face to show,
dropping a sentence like a spare house key,
and since the city has a spine—
they’re placed before you by accident:
the bakery you never enter, the last croissant cupped like an ear.

What harms it?
The stopwatch of self-improvement at the wrist,
the badge that thumps the door and never asks your name,
the urge to staple a plot—chairs set, an X for endings.
Let it speak a dialect the air forgets,
notes on a window the weather edits.

After it collapses (and it will; the living adjourn),
retire one joke like a jersey to the rafters.
Keep one receipt with their hurried hand;
cook their cheap pasta better than planned.
Don’t hire understudies—grief won’t rehearse.
Open a window. That friend is terrible at disguises—
you’ll know them by the ridiculous hat.

Rule of thumb: honour interruptions in the day.
Answer a text that only says, “Walk?”
Answer plainly.
Something small that rings without calling attention.

If you need an ending, borrow this:
two citizens of nowhere at dusk,
hands under ribs of something panicked and heavy,
boots drinking marsh while your laughter goes heady—
and up comes the horse, wet-flanked and wise.
The city forgets. The door replies.