Manchester, NH

At the diner down the street from the house where we all sleep on inflated mattresses, a woman wearing an apron calls me dear and refills my coffee. I don’t like the coffee and I don’t particularly want to drink any more coffee but it’s important to me that she refill it. It’s a small act of ritualised care, and that seems to matter, like it matters anytime someone does something for you that isn’t immediately profitable. It seems to matter that there are still some things that aren’t commoditised: that not everything has been optimised by the pressures of the market.