The Union Station bench smells like vinegar. I sweep the salty seat with my fingers before sitting, and smell my hands.
Sour.
Ketchup remains after being licked off by Chicago.
Track numbers echo repeatedly. Those who don't keep up with the city, those who sit instead of flee, become consumed with insanity when hearing the repetitive broadcast, seeing the same types of scurrying business people going up and down the escalators with ice cream cones in their hands.
Or maybe to be a Chicagoan is to be crazy, to linger where others scurry,
to sit beside a homeless man as he opens his can of tuna and eats with a plastic fork, some tines broken off like his teeth. He asks people for smiles and not coins to put in his coffee cup.
A man with no legs in a wheelchair tells me to "smile, girl" as I pivot past him across Madison. I shyly smile like a child pleasing a school photographer. He mumbles a "there ya go" as he rolls behind me, the wind laughing through my hair as it shades my face.
Chicago sits in a corner with a homeless man, peering behind an "Unemployed" sign, stealing a coin from the Saxophone Man's hat.
And then you realize, the city is not crazy, just an undulating wave of highs and lows, rich and poor, and loud heels and broken heels [in manholes].
