Nine quiet devotions. The rituals she'd never call rituals.
The joy pack. The boba on Saturdays. The text to Priya. The K-drama she had to pause. The flower for the lamp. The photo of Hangzhou she opens for two minutes when she needs to.
The woman at the Saturday place knows my order.
Brown sugar oat, less sweet, no pearls. I have never asked for anything different. She has never asked. We nod. She makes it. I pay. I nod. She nods. I walk out. The exchange takes ninety seconds and I will think about it for the rest of the day. I drink it slowly on the bench.
Fourteen Saturdays in a row on the same bench.
Southeast corner of McGolrick Park, facing the playground. The bagel is from the place that doesn't post on Instagram. Onion poppyseed, scallion cream cheese, small black coffee. The pigeons have started recognizing me — flattering, if slightly concerning. No schedule. No need. A bench, a bagel, a Saturday morning. Nothing required of me. I eat the whole thing.
Every Tuesday at 11am I text Priya: *checking in.
you good? Same words, two years now. She replies in four minutes. yeah. you?* That's the whole exchange most weeks. We've been friends twelve years across three cities. The text isn't the friendship. The text is the receipt that the friendship is still there. We have an unspoken agreement that whoever stops first has to explain why. Neither of us has stopped. Neither of us plans to.
There's a dumpling shop on the corner.
Open until midnight. Five-dollar dumplings, two-person line if I'm unlucky. The receipt has my last name on it—spelled wrong, but consistently, which has endeared me to the cashier. He has never said it out loud; I have never corrected him. I order pork and chive at eleven. I eat them standing in my kitchen by the window, watching the street empty out. This is what people mean when they say a city becomes yours.
I had to pause the episode.
He said something to her—quietly, near the end of episode eight—and I had to close the laptop and lie face-down on the carpet for a minute and a half. The cat watched. She has seen me do this before. The episode is paused at minute thirty-six. I will return to it in a moment. I just need this minute. It's the kind of moment that doesn't translate. He just said her name. That's all he said.
I buy a flower on Saturdays.
One stem, four dollars, from the man at the corner stall. Whatever's there — sometimes peonies, sometimes ranunculus, sometimes a thing I don't know the name of. I put it in the small clear vase next to the lamp. By Friday, I am emotionally invested in the flower. By Friday, it is starting to go. I mourn it briefly, throw it out, and buy a new one on Saturday. Four dollars. The most important work in this apartment.
WORD is the bookstore on Franklin.
I go in every other week, walk through the fiction section, and pick up the same book — a slim novel about a woman moving to the countryside. I have read the first page eleven times. I put it back. I'll buy it eventually, but not today. Today I just wanted to know it was still there. The woman at the register doesn't recognize me yet. I'm allowed to keep deciding.
Every morning before I leave the apartment, I put my hand on Mim's head.
Once. Small pressure. She barely opens her eyes. A small benediction the cat does not believe she needs, which is fair, because the benediction is secretly for me. The cat will spend the next eight hours sleeping in the chair, judging the radiator, watching a single fly with the level of attention I reserve for a deadline. I lock the door. We have an understanding. In three years, she hasn't broken her end of it.
There is a photo on my phone my cousin sent me in 2022.
The river at dusk in Hangzhou—the bridge, the boats, the light I haven't seen since I was eight. I open it on the hardest days. I look at it for two minutes. I don't talk to anyone about it. I don't post it. I close the app. The two minutes are usually enough. Sometimes they're not, and I open it again. The river is still there. The light is still there. I will go back. I keep saying that.