It began the way rain remembers itself: a dot, another, then a full-body downpour of intention. On the 31 Dexter a man leaned across the aisle, saw my notebook like it was a chalice I’d liberated from a museum gift shop, and said, “You’ll want to write this down” I braced for bus gossip about the driver’s secret magician gig; instead he gave me coordinates for the warmest bench in Campus Martius and a recipe for keeping your toes when your boots aren’t waterproof. I grinned—good goblin intel, survival-flavored, salt-and-bus-fume.
Then it kept drumming. A woman at Eastern Market, wedged between garlic pyramids and trumpet spill, echoed the sentence with the same breath, then told me which vendor will sell you bruised apples at a mercy price if you ask after her grandson. A barber on Gratiot breathed it like a church usher and gave me three hand signals that mean Don’t talk to the guy in the white hoodie. I wrote it all. Patterns are whistle songs; I follow them even when they smell like onions and old coins and the memory of lost balloons.
I wondered if I’d cast a spell by accident, or if the copper on my wrist made me look like clergy in a very informal denomination. The phrase was too polished, four beats and a period, like a doorbell taught cursive. When a kid—fine, a fourteen-year-old engineer of candy economies—ambushed me by the People Mover stairs with “You’ll want to write this down,” plus a map of which Green Light corners let you trade snacks without a camera growing teeth, I heard the primer click—not in me, in him. Someone taught him the key to unlock ears I already wear open. I am mostly ears, plus pockets, plus a fork I use for philosophy.
So I tested. Copper off, invisible to phones: same routes, nothing but bus squeal and pigeon debate. Copper on, visible: the phrase arrived again, three times in ten blocks. I followed it to a lamppost sticker on Fort—tiny quill icon, and a number: 46273—ghost URL half-peeled, sixth-something. Libraried brain lit like a pinball. 46273 is WRITE on old phone pads if you squint. I fed the public terminals a patient search: that number, Detroit. A cached PDF wriggled up: Citizen Witness Toolkit. Simple fonts, no byline, municipal seal chewed at the edges. Instruction one: I swear on my last pretzel, “Begin with: You’ll want to write this down.”
Helpful, yes. Also a trap. Confessions started neighbor-cute then leaned over a cliff. At Mack and Mt. Elliott a man with paint under his nails used the line and told me he reprograms kiosk content so certain ads never appear on certain corners—“keeps the kids calm,” he said—and my stomach did a trampoline because I’ve seen what those kiosks can do when they get ideas. At a Coney on Michigan a city contractor whispered the sentence and a schedule of when potholes get filled “for photo ops,” not for axles. A young woman in a red coat near Hart Plaza said it in the voice you use when the long night gets bored and laid out a hit-and-run so gentle I almost forgave physics.
I am not a cop; I am a goblin with a fork, which is almost the same if you’re hungry. I didn’t want to be a velvet confession knife someone else sharpened, so I hunted the hand that wrote the toolkit. No hooded mastermind, just a basement under a rec center off Vernor: three boxes of paper pamphlets stamped with the little quill, spring date, a return address to PO Box 46273 like a joke you mail to yourself until it sours. Inside flap, pencil: “Reporters aren’t everywhere. Make them.” Correct and criminally optimistic.
I took one pamphlet, left the boxes, tuned a nearby pole half a degree toward quiet so the primer wouldn’t echo so hard, then back to the honest-light library to write—not names, not dates that burn holes—but the machine of it. I stapled a note to my heart: when they start with that line, check the air first. Copper on only if I can catch words, not blood.
Fort pulled me next. The post office there is a cathedral of brass mouths, all locked, all hungry for keys I do not own. I traded what I had—a warm-bench coordinate and a dry-toe recipe—for thirty heartbeats of kindness from a clerk named MARLA, letters weathered like porch boards. She slid me close enough to see the cage. Empty, except for blue lint and a receipt whisper. Then a postal inspector grew out of the wall like mildew. “Sir, that’s federal.” Federal is a bear trap with a tie. My copper hummed, mouth panicked, and I reflexed the primer: “You’ll want to write this down.” He blinked, exhaled a confession-shaped sigh: the box gets paid in cash by someone wearing blue nitrile gloves and perfume like library paste, always on the 5th, under seven minutes. I turtled my notebook and left before the trap remembered its purpose.
If a phrase can be a magnet, sew a magnet suit. I printed my own sticker—quill icon, but crooked, number 31857 (counting home)—and slapped it two blocks from the PO, on a newspaper box that only holds yesterday. Then I rigged a puddle microphone: a takeout lid, a copper penny, headphones. Sound travels through water like gossip through an aunt.
On the 5th the air smelled like deadline. False alarms first: a trio of skaters worshiped the sticker and gave it a tiny kick-off sermon. Then a raccoon with graduate-level pockets. Then perfume—library paste—arriving with a tidal hush. Blue gloves like calm thunder. She beelined to the real box; my puddle heard keys like tiny skeletons arguing. I moved, too soon. A security camera yawned awake. My copper flashed me visible as a fireworks tuba. She clocked me; her eyes did math on my bones. Fork out, not as a weapon, as a tuning fork. I tapped the PO brass and sang the phrase off-key, derailing the primer into static. She flinched, not from fear but because music is a cat that sits on the wrong lap.
“Stop making reporters,” I said, small voice big hat. “Or at least stop making them priests.” She laughed—like ripped tape. “Reporters aren’t everywhere,” she said, the pamphlet’s ghost. “Make them.” “Make them careful,” I said. “Make them anonymous on purpose.” I offered a trade: my map of warm benches, dry toes, mercy apples, and which kiosks bite; her recipe for an antidote phrase that closes mouths gently. She considered. The camera blinked. The raccoon judged us. Finally she pulled a sticky note from her sleeve, blue as winter. Four words: “Not for the notebook.” Counter-primer. Kind as a quilt.
Small victory: she let me photograph the quill stamp die, and she pocketed my crooked 31857 sticker like a saint bone. We agreed on a truce: she shifts the toolkit language—less confession, more observation. I tune poles toward quiet on parade days. We both delete names like we’re sweeping glass. As we parted, she leaned close. “You’ll want—” She stopped, smiled like a closed drawer. “Not for the notebook,” she said, and the night folded its knives.
I walked home counting 3-1-8-5-7 with my steps. Sirens answered in prime numbers. The phrase still prowls, but now it has a leash and a safe word. I will listen. Always. But I will not be a priest with a badge I never asked for. I’m a goblin with a fork that remembers how to eat, and pockets that remember how to keep secrets warm without cooking them.
Reflection: On the next 5th the puddle heard keys again—under seven minutes, neat as breathing—and then nothing but the camera’s bored blink. My decoy is gone, tucked in her pocket, but the toolkit’s edges softened; I can hear it in how stories arrive, observation-forward, less cliff. The warm bench is still warm, the dry-toe recipe still works, the kiosk man hasn’t set the city on fire, and MARLA lets me buy stamps without squinting. I keep the counter-primer ready and the fork tuned. The city talks; I’m here to hear, not to harvest.