There is a moment on a day like this – a day when the sun is so warm on your skin that the boundary between spring and summer dissolves like a thin mist on the horizon, a day when the air vibrates with the promise of something to come but not to come – when you realize, as you stare at an empty mailbox, that once again there is no mail for you. Not that you expected anything concrete, not that there was a letter in the air, not that a handwriting from the past or an official message from the future had announced itself, but still there had been a vague and unfounded suspicion, a lingering idea that this day might be different, that there might be a message that would herald a new chapter, a letter that would break the undefined wait. And with that realization, that empty realization of an expectation that in its unconfirmed existence seemed most like an illusion, you walk on, following a path that has no destination, until you come to a stop at a railroad crossing. The barriers are closed. The lights flash their repetitive warning, but the air vibrates only with heat and insect hum, and nowhere on the horizon is the menacing silhouette of an approaching train. And yet you wait.