New York City, January 18, 2017

[No stars] Morning was still puddly, still gloomy, still blown with flying flecks of mist. After the mist stopped, things felt if anything worse, the dullness and dark and cold even lacking texture. The ugliness was thorough and general; no single spot in view, not even the waterlogged cigarette butts or the dissolving cardboard in their standing water, was as grim to look at as the whole. A dime fell out of a pocket while the keys were coming out, and the numb fingers that dug it out from the threshold came up also pinching a filthy pigeon feather.