On Sunday night, as the world resets to face another workweek, you walk through the square. It is quiet at first, as though the city is sighing, exhaling its last hours of light and freedom. But your footfalls make a calm beat against the paved sidewalks. Soft soles. A rhythm only you can hear.
And suddenly your senses awaken, and you are attuned to the city’s heartbeat, its soft and subtle chorus. A bus lumbers around a corner and roars toward a red light, then hisses to a stop. A mother walks hand-in-hand with her daughter, who is less than half of her—half as tall, as old, as hardened. The mother’s plastic bag flutters in the wind stampeding through the square. “Is it always going to be this way?” the daughter (perhaps) asks. “No, not always,” is the (possible) reply, spoken in a whisper.
Three men juggle a soccer ball, happily and with conviction. Their baggy clothes and damp pant cuffs are sincere and of a different time—of youth and noncommittal ease. A small dog leads its master from tree to tree and lifts its leg at every opportunity.
A young girl rides a shiny metal scooter as her father follows. He is all smiles with a winter cap, his hands buried in his pockets. The girl pauses and looks over her shoulder before kicking herself into motion. She is fast, and free, and breathless, and unafraid. Her scooter’s wheels clack over sidewalk seams as she speeds away, toward nothing in particular.
The wind crackles among bare tree limbs and stubborn, dry leaves. It is cold, so you begin to walk again. So many windows, you think, noting the balconies and drawn curtains and the squareness of everything. The windows on the top floors are arched, as if reaching for the darkening sky.
Lamps light the walk back, and people look at their feet as they pass in silence. But you make eye contact with a few, and nod to each other as you pass. Soon it will be night, and you will sleep, dreaming of the future next to the young girl you love.
-gj