Wanderings

I walked along, passing little cafés and bakeries, beside which little dogs were leashed. Day was fading to dusk, and the warmth of the air was drawn away into the recesses of the world that took with it the colour of the sky. The glow from each store window beckoned the darkness of twilight and the round-eyed curiosity of passers by, who seemed not to be so curious in the day, but then again, it wasn’t nearly as dark, an hour, even a minute, ago. “大好き”. Someone had scribbled “I love you” into a curbside aspen, a crooked heart encircling the even-more crooked characters. At least the meaning wasn’t crooked. Not far from the tree, a couple held hands, a boy and a girl no older than, perhaps, 17. The boy whispered into the girl’s ear, and she flushed with a smile. Large, adoring eyes stared into his face before she gave him a quick peck on the lips, to which he grinned, his eyes arching into crescents. Further along, a solitary woman in a business suit walked, and to my surprise, took off her heels to tread on the dew-covered grass at the edge of the sidewalk.