I don't pay much attention. I have my coffee and hold my paper and sometimes I even read it. But I like the sparseness of the morning, the slight movements and breezes. Women walking their dogs, men walking their girlfriends' dogs. I take in the newsprint, rub it on my fingers, sip my Fair Trade Nicaraguan medium dark roast, and let the world of this street flow around me. I don't focus. I don't feel the need. But every now and then there is something that focuses itself for me.
"Like, I'm all for women's rights," she said to her friend, "but at the same time you kinda have to be careful. Stuff like that's gonna happen." I took in her hair (strawberry blonde), her cutoffs (short), her sunglasses (bold and black). Her friend's summer dress skipped lightly on the sidewalk, her sunglasses blocking out half her face. There was too much light for the both of them. And then they were gone.
I had no context, no beginning or end, only middle. The ends of the situation—to her at least—were entirely justified. Whatever had happened was bound to happen, and it has happened and will happen again. To her friends, to others, and to her. And suddenly the world of this street, and others, the trickling sunlight and early air, seemed to me cold, and dark, and spiraling inexplicably out of control.
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