keep walking

The day was ending and the sky grew into a sweet summer peach. I trekked across the bridge, as a lonely photographer clicked his camera in my direction from afar.

----

They had sprinkled themselves everywhere along the sidewalk. They must have all fallen from the trees. Once they were candy-babies, stuck behind the comfortable lining of a tree leaf as a line of lemondrops. And now, all grown up, dashing young hairy catterpillars graced the concrete, like teenagers in miniskirts and slick jean jackets let loose from their provincial small towns into the city for a Friday night.

---

As I opened the door to the sleepy used-book store a brown fat furry cat crawled to the door. "She won't escape," the young shopkeeper assured me. I opened the door enough to let myself in and the shopkeeper returned to clicking away at the internet.

Amongst the stacks of old books, only dust shuffled in the air, awakening the old stories like a mature reggae band rocking an 80's tune in a muggy corner street lounge. A green parrot echoed "Hi" over and over again as my eyes scanned the stacks until I found two thick bricks of paper and words to bring home at 50% Amazon's going rate.

---

All of Friday night was out. Shiny long legs on display. Young men playing the casual cat by hanging their blazers lazily on their shulders as they wait for the waitress at the popular joint to call their name. The restaurant buzzed; a former corner drug store from yesteryear, now a jazz-on-Friday and salsa-on-Saturday pasta place where hip young people flock to in the evenings, trying to make a memory out of an ordinary night.

They call this neighborhood Dinkytown. It was the first place I settled in this cold city. My family thought it was the funniest name for a neighborhood, and when one of my neighbors flashed me on a fall evening as I walked home alone, it was enough to convince them the name is apt. But tonight, Dinkytown held my imagination close to something acceptable.

---

On the walk home, the cityline dominated the last moments of dusk. The skyscrapers each lit a different shade of jewel, to highlight this mini crown of civilization captured in a downtown spectacle. The bright neon of the old flour mills battles with that of the fresh hotels, a city of many generations, while the thin sliver of the bright white moon illuminates the early night sky, another neon sign of the city.

I arrive home, careful not to step on the ant hills which have been dug out between the slabs of concrete. Some ants still are scurrying at this late hour.

Another full circle, like a lighthouse beam outlines an ocean.