A sad, captive chicken lived in an enclosed glass box next to shelves of dusty canned goods at the back of a small Asian market. Upon entering the market, any customer with reasonable hearing heard the bored chicken scratching and pecking in the confined space. PETA used to send angry letters to the store owners, an elderly couple who immigrated from Bengbu, China, demanding the chicken’s release. But the tragic fate of hundreds of bushels of lobsters sold at the fish market down the block caught PETA’s attention, and the letters stopped. One chicken’s isolated confinement seemed hardly worth the effort when compared to the suffering of hundreds of lobsters sentenced to a cruel, boiling death.

There was an electrified panel inside the glass box with a large tic-tac-toe grid for the chicken to peck at, and a matching grid panel on the outside of the box for a customer. It cost 50 cents a game to match wits with the chicken. Anyone who beat the chicken at tic-tac-toe won a bag of fortune cookies. No one remembered the last time the chicken lost.

Leo, an older man from the neighborhood who was just shy of retirement but without any plans, would stop by the store on his way home from work. Leo was driven to beat that chicken before leaving the workforce. He knew he wasn’t going to get a gold watch or even much of a goodbye. Leo didn’t have any friends at work. He needed that win. It wasn’t about the fortune cookies but something deeper.

On a warm spring afternoon, a month before Leo’s last day at the loading dock, his mood was strangely upbeat. With unusual confidence, Leo entered the store, walked directly to the game, and dropped in two quarters. The chicken pecked first, selecting an O in the middle square. House rules: the chicken always goes first. Leo punched an X in the square above the chicken’s O. Without hesitation, the chicken pecked an O next to the first one. Leo paused to consider a strategy, trying to think a couple of moves ahead. That’s when he saw her reflection in the glass.

She wasn’t a traditional beauty. She looked to be as old as Leo, but wholesome, like she lived her life with a no-frills authenticity and grace. She carried a simple, plain-spoken beauty, someone at peace with themselves and happy with their world. In an instant, Leo knew that he could be with her, that she could fill his heart. They could be a unit. Leo hadn’t been with anyone since his divorce fifteen years before. Forgetting the game, he focused on her reflection, seeing a whole new life in it. His breath became shallow. Somehow, he just knew it could work.

Still watching her reflection, trying to think of something to say to break the ice, she turned to him, her serene expression turning to shock. “Oh!” she said. But it wasn’t Leo that startled her. She was looking at the chicken. Leo watched as she screamed at the owners. “How can you do that to a poor chicken?” Then she stormed out. As quickly as his heart swelled with possibility, it now deflated like a neglected party balloon. Leo knew he would never see her again.

Leo didn’t care about winning anymore, but he kept playing out of habit. He blindly picked, and the chicken pecked. Without trying, losing all investment in the game’s outcome, Leo won. A rusty bell mounted on top of the chicken’s box automatically rang, announcing his win to the owners. Leo grabbed his bag of fortune cookies from one of the owners on his way out, not acknowledging their obligatory “Congratulations!” It was a hollow win, a booby prize.

Leo opened the bag of fortune cookies while he walked down the block to his lonely studio apartment. He plucked a cookie from the bag and broke it open. He read the fortune while munching on the stale treat. You will be poorly dressed and alone when you die, the fortune read. “Goddamn chicken,” Leo muttered to himself.

I heard a sharp click-clacking on the sidewalk, like a tap dancer was walking towards me in the night. When the man turned the corner and came into view, I saw his beat-up sneakers and thought he must have hammered metal bottle caps into the soles. He carried two old bushel baskets, one in each hand. I could tell he was trying to keep them still as he walked, barely moving his arms.

I sat on the stoop outside my Lower East Side studio, nursing a beer and chain-smoking. I spent many evenings sitting on the stoop, nursing, smoking, and greeting the passing people. They were mostly strangers, but I always said hello. It’s good to be friendly. As the man passed, I offered a “G’d evening.” He gave me a quick look and nodded, keeping his arms stiff as his steps click-clacked. There was something off about the man, like he wasn’t from the city. He seemed foreign in a way I couldn’t pin down.

The man was half a block away when it got weird. He dropped one of the baskets, and what looked like a tiny man wearing a tiny, dark suit fell out. He rolled into a smooth somersault on the sidewalk and sprang up to his little feet like a gymnast. He was seriously tiny, no taller than six or seven inches. He wasn’t a doll. He was a tiny, living man. I coughed on my cigarette smoke mid-inhale and felt an unfamiliar pulling pressure in my stomach. A blanket of strangeness fell over the block, like an alien world was suddenly covering it, a world where a tiny man falling out of a basket wasn’t unusual.

After his graceful recovery, the tiny man faced the man who dropped him. He started talking, angrily waving his little arms. I couldn’t hear his words. The man who dropped him bent down and whispered something—probably an apology. The tiny man reached out with both his little arms, allowing himself to be picked up and gently placed back in the basket. The man continued down the sidewalk, keeping his arms extra still so the baskets wouldn’t jostle. Instead of weakening with his departure, the pulling sensation in my stomach grew stronger. I put down my beer and grabbed the railing to keep from being forced to follow.

Still clutching the railing, questions surfaced. Was that a real tiny man? And where was that man going? And what or who was in the other basket? And why did I feel like I was being pulled in their direction, like the alien world wanted me more than my familiar neighborhood? And what’s up with the click-clacking shoes?

The pull to follow grew stronger, and I was getting scared. The man with two baskets was further away. It didn’t make sense. Then I heard another set of click-clacking, the same as before. This time, it was a woman who came into view when she turned the corner. She wore a simple business suit and carried two tote bags. The click-clacking sound came from simple loafers. The instant I saw her, she smiled at me, and the pulling stopped. There was an unmistakable glow coming from her eyes. It was a beautiful glow, reminding me of desert sunsets.

I took a drag from my cigarette to catch my breath and tried to smile back at the woman through the smoke. “G’d evening,” I said as she passed, making it sound more like a question. She kept looking at me, and her smile got bigger. It was a genuine and rare kind of smile, like a warm bubble bath. I figured it was her smile that stopped the pulling. And it felt like the alien world was gone, no longer covering over my block. Everything was back to normal.

The woman with two tote bags passed, following the man with two baskets. I figured they were going to the same place. I felt like myself again. The fear was gone, and now I wanted to find out where they were going, to go to that alien world, at least for a visit. But she stopped the pulling with her smile. I knew I lost my chance because of fear. She shut whatever door the man with two baskets opened. I stubbed out my cigarette and walked after them. At the end of the block where they turned, I looked, but didn’t see them. I went back to my stoop and lit another cigarette.

I had so many questions, but knew there’d be no answers. I’m not comfortable with so much uncertainty. Still, I learned reality is bigger and more mysterious than I thought. Now, all I want is to find that alien world and see the tiny man again—more than I want to sit on this damn stoop. But that’s what I’ll do: sit, nursing a beer, chain-smoking, hoping to hear that click-clacking again.

Franklin bought his cannabis from one dealer. He only trusted SkipJack. SkipJack was a cannabis artist of the highest order. He braided elements from different strains of Indica and Sativa in mysterious ways that some said were divinely inspired. He refined a plant’s natural alchemy to yield the perfect high for any sought-after mood, from bordering manic, get shit done euphoria to lucid dreamy-time states.

Very few saw inside SkipJack’s Manhattan loft. He valued his privacy and did the bulk of his business on a busy corner in front of a restaurant known for its cinnamon buns. The few fortunate enough to enter his home found a delightfully humid thicket of sprouting buds in greens, purples, ochres, and fruity to flamey reds. Most of SkipJack’s regular customers would sample from a variety of his cosmic cornucopia, praising the masterful breadth of his botanical wizardry.

Franklin was an unusual regular, always buying the same strain in the same amount every week, an eighth of an ounce of Midnight Sanctuary, a mild Sativa blended to elicit moods of creative ease. That was the headspace Franklin valued most, forsaking all of SkipJack’s other triumphs. SkipJack appreciated Franklin’s loyalty and always had an eighth of Midnight Sanctuary set aside on Thursday nights when Franklin would come by.

Franklin walked the six blocks from SkipJack’s corner to his small studio apartment in the evening’s muted chill. The nip in the air quickened his pace as he fingered the baggie in his coat pocket.

Franklin, like SkipJack, was also an artist. His medium was the written word. Franklin lived alone and didn’t socialize. His art was his everything. The only witnesses to his creative pursuits were a few wandering tenement spirits. Franklin knew they were around, but didn’t bother them much other than to say hello. They seemed to appreciate his recognition.

Franklin lived in a fifth-floor walk-up. He climbed the stairs with practiced ease and entered his apartment. He sat at a rickety card table, took an appreciative whiff of his Midnight Sanctuary, and rolled a joint. Lighting up, he savored the earthy sizzle in the back of his throat. After a couple hits, he stubbed the joint out in an old hotel ashtray and opened a Winnie the Pooh spiral notebook he bought at a back-to-school sale. He gazed at a blank page. It was an unforced gaze, meditative. The Midnight Sanctuary eased his mind and opened his meridians, allowing the rapturous flow of qi, enhanced by the bud, to energize his system. He sat motionless, enjoying the currents of his inner life. He stared at the open notebook for a long time.

In a sudden burst, Franklin’s stillness became a blur of expression, an unexpected, impassioned wave. He grabbed his pen and furiously scratched out some words. There wasn’t a pause, no real consideration for what he was writing, like water gushing from an open fire hydrant.

As abruptly as it began, it finished. Franklin sat back in stillness. After a few minutes, he smoked the rest of the joint and looked down at his words. He smiled.

A bee’s face is sweating.

Is it anxious or just warm?

Are flowers enough?

Franklin carefully tore the page from his notebook, balled it up with reverence, and placed it in the center of the ashtray. He opened his screenless window. The sounds and smells of the city crashed past the tenement spirits. He breathed it all in. Life.

Franklin picked up his lighter and lit the balled-up paper. He held the ashtray so the smoke of his words streamed out the window, mingling with the city’s sounds and smells, adding its own peaceful luster, blessing every in-breath in the neighborhood normally stifled by the fears and horrors of a world gone mad. When the paper was nothing but ash, Franklin blew the ash to follow the smoke. This was his art, which he shared with his fellow citizens who always offered him the courtesy of leaving him alone.