The Storefront I Keep Returning To

November seventh.

The photograph is a dry cleaner's window. That's it. A large plate-glass front with a faded green awning, the kind of place that has probably been there since before the neighborhood had its current name, and will probably still be there when the neighborhood has some new one. I took it last Saturday on the way back from the bus stop two stops east, the detour I wrote about, and I've looked at it probably twelve times since then. I don't know why. The image itself isn't remarkable. The light was good because the light at that hour on that side of the street is always going to be good, which is the only reason I lifted the camera at all. But something about it keeps pulling.

I printed it out. That's when I knew I was in trouble. I don't print things casually; paper costs money and the printer in this apartment is temperamental in a way that feels personal. I printed it anyway, set it on the kitchen table, and stood there looking at it for a few minutes like I was waiting for it to explain itself. It didn't. The bowl was on the windowsill behind me doing its usual nothing. The card was beside it. Everything in its place, and here was this piece of paper from a neighborhood I had never been to before October, demanding some attention I didn't know I owed it.

trying to figure out what I'm actually looking at

I went back to the neighborhood in my head a few times this week. Not in a romantic way, I'm not writing a novel, just the particular way a place lodges when you came to it sideways and without a plan. The street name is Renner. I remember this because I had to check my photos to confirm it and then immediately forgot it again and had to check a second time. Renner. One block of storefronts, a dry cleaner, something that might be a hardware supplier, and at the far end what looked like a coffee place but might have been a print shop. I didn't go in anywhere. I was on my way back to the bus stop and the light was going.

I don't know what this is yet. That's the honest answer. The camera settled into furniture, the route settled into a habit, and now there's apparently a neighborhood one bus transfer east of here that I've thought about more times this week than I've thought about most things I chose deliberately. I'm noting it here the way I'd note a name on a list I haven't titled yet, just so I know I saw it.