EMPTY POCKETS

Marusya takes in shoes at a repair shop on the edge of town and can get anyone talking. After a conversation like that, a person finds something in their pocket they never bought: a brass compass, a folding loupe, a worn order book – the tool of a life they have not lived yet. For years she has read other people's possibilities off these things. There is one man she never asks: the one she has lived with for twelve years.