I have my wallet, car keys, running shoes, and coffee cup simultaneously shoved under my armpit as I fumble in my backpack for my key to lock the door. I drop my stupid left shoe on the ground as I'm turning the key and have to squat down in a deep plié like a pregnant mother to grab it. I check my watch. I've got 7:45 on the dot, which means I have fifteen total minutes to make the thirteen minute commute, find a cramped parking spot in the parking garage, run to get the elevator, and then race to my class on the fifth floor before it's too late. I feel like in undergrad I could have walked in halfway through class and my professors wouldn't bat an eye, but showing up at 8:01 in grad school would leave me on the other side of a locked door. I guess I am paying for every minute. I turn the key in my car once and hear a slight sputtering of the engine, but it doesn't start.I'm begging my old car to please just hold out until I can graduate and make doctor money and get rid of it. But that's three years from now and I have thirteen minutes left to get to class. On my third try it finally starts. I let out a little whoop and drive out of my neighborhood. By the first red light, I'm hearing my brakes making that horrible screech and just turn my music up to ignore it because again, I have literally no money to worry about all that right now. 

I wish I could be one of those grad students with rich parents that bought me a car as a college graduation present. Ugh, I really shouldn't wish that. I love my parents and they are helping me out by giving me a grocery stipend, so I really should be more grateful.

The air in my car is starting to be stifling. Midterms are over and it seems like it's hotter than it was at the beginning of this semester. Isn't it supposed to be fall? I go to crank my AC up and then remember that it's not working, so I roll both of my windows down and feel the breeze kind of freshen up the stale humid air in my car until all of my hair's in my face and now I can't really see the road. I really need a haircut. Ugh, I don't have any money for that either. Maybe I could just learn how to cut my hair. I'm sure there's a Youtube video that could teach me. 

It's a good time to roll my windows back up anyways, because I'm about to stop at a stoplight five minutes through my commute where I know homeless people always walk up to your car. I really wish they wouldn't do that. I'm not going to give them any money because I don't have any anyway and even if I did, they would just use it to buy drugs. I see a woman with a sign that says "Anything helps." I want to believe her, but I was warned before I moved to this city that sometimes homeless people will pull a gun on you if you try to help them.

 I'm not sure how true that is but it's enough to keep my eyes firmly fixed on the stoplight ahead of me. Please turn green. I glance quickly sideways and notice the woman is now looking straight at me. I wish, not for the first time, that I had gotten some tint on my car windows when I bought it. 

I can't help but look at her a little longer as she starts to walk towards me. At what point in her life did she end up out here, and why am I not? As soon as I have this thought, I start to feel queasy, like my stomach is turning inside out. I feel like an invisible hand has pulled me out of my car and I black out as I smash into the pavement.  

I wake up and feel the cold prickly concrete stabbing the side of my face. What do they even put in concrete to make it so pokey anyways? I sit up and stretch out a crick in my neck that I've been fighting for years. It's starting to get cold at night again. I feel like I can never win. 

At night for the last few months it's been so hot and humid it's been hard to fall asleep, what with the dense city air pushing down on my chest until it feels like I'm going to choke. I feel like all the water I drink is just fighting a losing battle to the neverending sweat that coats my whole body all day every day. But I would rather be hot than cold. I look down at the sneakers I got at the Salvation Army a couple weeks ago and think about my left pinky toe that I lost while huddled in the clothes I owned to keep warm at the start of this year. Even though it's probably 78 degrees right now, I still shiver at the thought of it.

I need to get moving before the cops start walking the park. Usually there's a grace period until the sun comes up, but those runners have started to come out earlier and earlier and with them, cops that want us gone. I gather up my blanket and the rest of a McDonald's meal that someone bought me last night, and what few dollars I was given from standing on the corner yesterday. Hopefully today is a better day. I need to ride the bus today to the other side of town since that mobile clinic is open, and my foot still has that same infection that keeps coming back no matter how hard I try to rest it like the doctor always tells me. The problem is if I rest, then I don't eat. 

So I make my way over to the street I usually stand on. I pull out my sign just like I always do and stand for my daily humiliation. The road isn't too busy yet, because all the fancy people aren't up for work yet. But the longer I'm out here, the more I'm likely to get. 

I hate standing here. I know all the people in their cars can see me, but they look straight ahead and pretend they can't. Sometimes I just look at the ground, tired of begging with my eyes just for them to look at me. Every once in a while there will be a nice old lady or a young man that will roll their window down and hand me something, either a water bottle or a couple dollars or whatever, but what I really want is just someone to talk to me. Someone to ask me how I'm doing, how my day is going. To care about me. 

The light turns red so I look at which cars ended up in front of me. There's a girl in a smaller car staring determinedly at the light like it's about to turn green, but it literally just turned red and there's at least two whole minutes until the cars start moving again. I walk up to her car and see my reflection in her window. I must seem scary to her, with my matted hair and my wild eyes. I wonder what she sees. As we make eye contact I think I would give anything to be her, sitting in that car, probably going off to a job or school or getting breakfast or something, all these things I can't do. 

I'm jolted back into my body as I turn and look at the woman on the corner as if for the first time, as if I haven't just seen into her soul, woken up like I was her, and had to claw my way to this corner. I reach down to feel my left foot, which I could have sworn was just throbbing with pain. Tears start to flood my eyes as I look at the time- I'm still just five minutes into my drive to school. Every single thing I look at, from my backpack full of supplies that are helping me get this education to the very car I'm sitting in, the car that is such a blessing because it gets me where I need to go, every single thing is a blessing that I completely disregarded in my ignorance. I think about all I saw through that woman's eyes, and this time, when I glance over at her and see her looking back, I roll down the window.