Throwback Thursday: ‘Analyze and Discuss’ by Stephen Koster

Rachel, the girl sitting in the window, is a poet. You may have seen Rachel with a typewriter. Not so strange, even in this day and age, for a poetess full of whimsy to own a typewriter. The unusual part is Rachel doesn’t use the typewriter at home. The typewriter is for public use only. Not by the public — for the public — and while you or I might feel pretentious or out of place dragging that ten-ton brick through a bus station, that’s because we’re not this girl, Rachel, who seems, honestly, not to care.

You may have seen her kind before. Rachel has thin fingers, the fat sucked out by smoking cigarettes. She types small notes, little love things to the world, somethings to remember her by, to step on, to take, to read, to keep.
        
The first note Rachel wrote for me said, “Stuff a smile in your sock.”
        
I picked the note off the edge of a garbage bin and read the typewritten words over three times. You don’t go looking for meanings with these things; you can’t, and yet, of course, you can. She wrote a note my friend picked up that said, “Bring all your money to the river.  You can float on it if you believe.”
        
That one seems satirical, but who knows? That’s the beauty of words: it’s up to you. It’s not up to critics, writers, or anyone who thinks they know what’s what. Of course, not everyone picks the notes up. Some people step on them, read them, and say out loud, “That’s stupid,” and sometimes Rachel’s right there. She doesn’t answer, just writes the next one. She goes from bench to bench, stall to stall, wherever, and drops them as she types.  
        
Will Rachel talk to us?