A father passes by slowly on the street outside. He is teaching his young daughter how to ride a bike. No, a trike. She is very young. She is a chubby little sprite with dark hair and dark eyes. The kind of child thing that always makes me think of me as myself when I was a baby. I have a picture of myself as a baby on my fridge. I'm not sure why. It was the one put in my high school senior yearbook next to my "grownup" photo, and I just kept it.

I wonder if I need to remind myself sometimes that I was a baby. My mother said I was a good baby. That she would come into my room in the middle of the night over and over to check my windows and make sure they were locked because I was such a beautiful baby that she was sure someone would come in and steal me. I have seen prettier babies but I am too much like my mother not to understand her and to know that I would check my baby's windows over and over again.

The father and his daughter are stopped in my driveway. She has fallen again. I have seen them pass by  for the past three days, and always she has fallen in my driveway. I wonder if it is dangerous. She does not cry, but it takes her a while to pick herself back up. He smiles at her. I think. She smiles back too, I think. I guess at this because I have taken off my glasses. The world is painted in watercolor and vision strain.

They continue on. I wonder if they will be back tomorrow. I pretend they will, even though I will not be there to see them. She will fall again. She will not cry, and he will help her back up. They will continue on. I try not to think of myself as a baby, myself with a baby. A baby with dark hair who is very serious and does not cry often. A baby who pretends to read to herself.

I have half a dozen tabs on my browser open dedicated to freelance writing. I try not to think of those either. They are reminders of what I have and have not gotten done today. I am not sure anymore what falls into either category. The world blurs. I had gone into my office and opened the window to sit at my typewriter and smoke furiously on my last cigarette. I sat with my fingers at the stanza of a half finished poem and did not type anything. I realized that  with the window open the sound of frantic keys bashing would be loud. Too loud for the neighborhood street at late afternoon, when the leafblowers have finally been laid to rest. I do not want to scare the little girl on her tricycle.

I decide instead that the poem is finished, that I am finished for today. Instead I turn back to my computer, the life of the endless screen. I open up another tab. I start typing again.

It's like pedaling on a stationary bike that has one too many loose bolts. A hesitation, an uncertainty, the drive to move even though I'm not sure where I'm headed. Probably nowhere. Maybe to a sudden halt, or the ground. Maybe unexpectedly forward. I don't have a pitch or a cover letter or even a short bio to attach to today. Or yesterday, or the day before. Perhaps tomorrow, but not likely. Tomorrow is back to the long day with marked hours, the day filled with people and determined small talk and cash and credit changing hands.

There is laughter now, echoing from somewhere down the street. Maybe the little girl. Maybe another family come out to play. They are everywhere and nowhere, leading lives on the other side of my window, in their houses and mortgages. Leading lives on channels I'm not tuned into. I don't even own a TV.

There's another blank page lying in wait just ahead, and I don't know what's at the end of it. I don't even know if there is an end of it. I live in the age of endless scrolling, of infinite browser tabs. Hyperlinks and media, always on to the next best thing. Or at least the next thing. I open up another browser tab. Split the difference between two blank pages.

I check the driveway before I close the front window. Empty. But everywhere everything is superimposed. A trike tumped over. A baby that hasn't existed for twenty odd years. Tomorrow's time card. And again.

I lock the window. I go back and check it again, just in case someone is trying to steal me. No one is.