He found the best lines in bathrooms. In the cracked stalls in clubs and bus stations, places where people had something to unload. The writing was uneven, hurried, often cruel. Honest in a way conversations rarely are. He would go in to wash his hands and come out with a phrase in his head.
“I tried to be good.”
“Call your mother.”
“Nothing ends clean.”

He never photographed the graffiti. That struck him as unethical. He memorized a little in transit, the way memory always does and usually for the better. By the time the words reached the page, they were his and not his. That seemed fair or at least defensible in a conversation he hoped never to have.

At home he sat with his guitar and tried to persuade the lines into songs. The graffiti evolved. Confessions turned philosophical. Threats mellowed into something like prayers. A sentence scrawled above toilet paper became a chorus. A heart sketch with two initials turned into a bridge that almost worked. People often told him his lyrics felt raw, like overheard thoughts. He nodded and thanked them, resisting the urge to explain that they were overheard thoughts. Bathrooms, he had learned, were where the truth relaxed.