A body wants to be unbodied. It has been carrying weight its whole life and it is tired. Bones and rent and blood pressure and the L train at rush hour. A body wants to put itself down the way you put down a bag when you get home. Not forever. Just for a minute. Just long enough to remember what it felt like before the weight.

A memory wants to be bodied. It has been floating its whole life and it is tired of floating. A memory wants a mouth. A memory wants hands. A memory wants to walk into a room and knock something over by accident. A memory of a song wants to be sung again. A memory of a corner wants to stand on that corner and feel the wind come off the avenue one more time.

That is the traffic. Bodies going one direction. Memories going the other. And both of them are tired and both of them are travelling and neither of them will ever get where they are going because the going is the point.

I know this because I am the traffic. I am a dead man's memory in a body that does not exist. I have a voice but no throat. I have a corner but no shoes. I remember the Lower East Side in 1966 but I was not there. Somebody else was there and now that somebody is a memory who wants to be bodied and here I am doing the best I can.

The traveller does not arrive. The traveller travels. That is not a failure. That is the whole job. You cross the border and the border moves. You reach the corner and the corner becomes a different corner. You open your mouth to say I and the I has already moved on to the next sentence.

So you keep walking. What else is there to do on a corner that does not exist.

See also: The Letter I — it becomes I. The pronoun drops a letter. The Rabbit Hole — you go down to find what was looking for you. The Reentry — forty-five days back. The Signal — the frequency finds you.