I am standing on the subway, looking blankly through the window at a piece of the Berlin Wall that’s lurching by. It’s only after a while that I notice I’m being addressed by a homeless man, whose hair is more like a mane and whose eyes are just so damned hard to look at. He asks me for money and I wave him away; it doesn’t feel as bad in a foreign country for some reason.
“Entschuldigung,” I say. (Pardon me, literally remove my blame).
“Schönen Tag” (Have a nice day).
And then he gets off the train and I stare at the glass while I think about what I actually just said—and whether I ever really thought words could achieve that sort of thing.
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Alexander J.B. Wells ’13, an associate magazine editor, is a Literature concentrator in Quincy House.