The Morning Still Needs Our Hands

How it begins

At four twelve, Ada finds a birthday candle under seat seventeen.

At four thirteen, she finds the cake.

There are days the city leaves its celebrations whole for someone else to put away.

She photographs neither.

The staff kitchen has a poster thanking essential people.

The tap beneath it has needed a washer since November.

Ada puts a cup under the drip.

Across the road, Samir lifts trays from an oven older than his youngest child.

He knows the sound of bread cooling, the faint conversation of crusts in a quiet room.

He does not call it music.

He is tired of being asked to make tiredness beautiful.

At five, he leaves two rolls beside the depot gate.

Ada leaves the cup where the next cleaner will see it before the floor gets wet.

Neither writes a message about kindness.

They have other messages.

The glove order is late. The back step needs a rail. Please stop calling a split shift a flexible opportunity.

By six, the first passengers arrive carrying warm paper bags and the small authority of people expected somewhere.

A child thanks Ada for the clean seat.

She says you're welcome because she means it.

Then she tells the supervisor about the broken tap again.

Both things can happen in one morning.

When daylight reaches the depot windows, it finds fingerprints, a half-finished list, and a chair pushed back by someone whose shift has ended.

The city likes to say it wakes itself.

Ada catches the bus home.

Samir wipes the counter.

In a kitchen on the other side of town, a person they have never met begins another task.

No sunrise can do it for them.

No poem should pretend the thanks are wages.

Still, the candle goes in the little drawer where Ada keeps things that might be useful later.