Our children grow restless in their beds, despite the cold of brick and pallet, the chuff of dimming coals. They are hungry despite the supper just provided. We ruffle their bellies, goading them still with wonders from the City of Good Intentions.

In the City of Good Intentions, loading docks receive hourly transports bearing bound periodicals, typed and handwritten correspondence, adhesive placards, buttons, lawn pickets, scrolled petitions. Industry can barely keep pace with benevolence. Through a series of strategic folds and tears, two dozen letters of concern for the indigent and oppressed are enough to clothe an orphan, less depending on the stock. Shredded and boiled in a mixture of water and vinegar, newspaper editorials can be distilled into a nutritive paste that suppresses hunger. Loose pages are distributed in bags, along with easy-to-follow instructions for weaving blankets. Unbarbed, protest badges form adjustable casters for the transport of bin and bedroll, while pickets are assembled into ergonomic frames for sleeping en plein air.

Our reveries are interrupted by the howl of unseen strays. Whispers emerge from the dusk at our feet. Tell us more, they insist, fingers smoothing feebly at graveled cheeks.