But we are all articles left behind. A glove. A phone charger. A half-finished sentence. A promise we forgot to keep.

The machine exhales a ribbon of paper—thin, thermal, unfeeling. $24.50. 11.3 miles. 28 minutes. The taxi bill lands in my palm like a verdict.

We don't talk about what a taxi bill actually measures. Not miles. Not minutes. But the cost of not being somewhere else. The price of leaving before the fight ends. The tariff on grief expressed in motion— I paid to move through space because I couldn't move through this.

I step out. The door thuds shut. The taxi pulls away, brake lights bleeding red into the night. And I stand there—holding a receipt for 28 minutes of my life—wondering why it feels like a ransom note.

I look at the fine print on the back: Not responsible for articles left behind.