Thank you for saving my life, it read, and then the second line landed like a hand on my shoulder, you already saved it once before. Underneath was a date from three years earlier and the name of a café I hadn’t thought about in ages, Lucy’s Café, the lunch place I used to love before it closed. Memory returned in a flash, a thunderstorm, people crowding inside to escape the rain, and a soaked hollow eyed man stumbling through the door carrying something heavier than hunger. I remembered the waitress hesitating and everyone looking away, and I remembered myself buying him coffee and a croissant, offering a smile that felt ordinary, forgettable, the kind of decency you do without expecting it to matter. That night sleep wouldn’t come, because the idea that something so small could have held someone in the world for even one more day refused to loosen its grip on me.
