Lucy Harris

The City is My Favorite Gallery and I Never Need a Ticket I Didn’t Plan to Fall in Love With the Concrete It wasn’t a gallery. It was a sidewalk. I was walking alone near North Melbourne Station, somewhere between errands and nowhere, when I noticed a pale rectangle of light brushing up against a rusted metal fence. The wall behind it had cracked in just the right way, like veins on a leaf, and I stopped. Not because I was admiring it. Not because I wanted to photograph it.

There are days when I scroll through updates, stories, and headlines — and it feels like everyone has found their thing. People seem to know where they’re going. They’re building startups, buying houses, publishing books, starting families. And I’m just… here. Thinking about whether I remembered to water the plant in my kitchen. It’s a quiet kind of panic — not dramatic, not loud. More like a dull ache behind the eyes, or a question you keep asking without expecting an answer.

And I need to stop treating it like one. Lately, I’ve been catching myself switching between five things at once, mentally, physically, emotionally. A tab for work, a tab for messages, a tab for something I forgot to buy, a memory, a worry. I can be halfway through responding to a Slack message while also mentally drafting an email, listening to a podcast, remembering that I need to defrost chicken, and wondering if I ever texted someone back three days ago. And the worst part?