Verbs

To write without really knowing why or how. To produce without any discernable goal. To let things lie, to accept for the sake of acceptance, to forgive for the sake of
forgiveness, to say something aloud, to cease to think. To let the other
person talk instead. To be aboard a train at midnight with no real
sense of time or fatigue, only the number of sidelong glances thus far
(five?). To finish a pack of cigarettes long after you’ve quit. To look
right not left. To spend $20 on the fucking train because of blind
error. To long for multiple shores, both here and there. To watch the
man across the aisle change his mind about his seat at least thrice. To
draw a triangle in the memory of one’s mother. To recount shared time
with no detail forgotten. To live through September without a battle. To
arrive five minutes earlier than anticipated. To slowly subtract, and
subtract, and subtract some more. To deduce. To sigh and only realize it
after the fact. To write only on overland trains. To offer the benefit
of the doubt a third and final time. To be resigned to a native accent.
To bury past lives along the Northern Line and then, four years later,
fail to find them. To follow a stranger’s conversation, not by choice.
To retract a plan. To compile and then condense. To leave behind a
language. To let the city exist without subjecting it to any sort of
romance. To feel the seasons reordering themselves in spite of protest.
To do, for once, instead of to know.

—Anonymous