Tomorrow, the barista will hand you a flat white. The train will brake. The pigeon will not care. But maybe — just maybe — you will notice the thing you almost noticed today. The child at the window. The blue in the sky. The man on the milk crate, whose sign now reads, “Still unaware. Still here. Still asking.”
You walk to the train. Above ground, a billboard cycles through three ads: a perfume that smells like “nothing you’ve ever known,” a bank that promises to treat you like a person (as if persons are what they want), and a streaming series about a detective who solves murders by feeling the emotions of the victims. You think about that for a moment — the privatization of empathy — and then the train arrives, and you forget. unaware in the city v45
Outside, the city has already decided what kind of day it will be. The coffee shop on the corner is playing lo-fi beats that loop every ninety seconds. The barista, whose name tag reads “Jesse” but whose eyes say something else entirely, hands you a flat white without being asked. You thank them. They nod. Neither of you means it. This is the contract of the unaware: civility without curiosity. Tomorrow, the barista will hand you a flat white