Perhaps
Dusk, rain.
I don’t know. Maybe I was expecting something different. It’s possible. Something other than the nights of fog and afternoons of rain, rudely punctuated by dawns and dusks and gloamings serene and unencumbered. Come to think of it, though, no one uses the word ‘gloaming’ anymore; nobody sane, anyway. Certainly not the young woman screaming at the cyclist this morning; I turned my head to look, but she was gone, the screaming one, in a fury down the road. Nearby, a sanctimonious woman stared at me, appalled at my gaping, the cold morning run red against her cheeks. I walked quickly to the library, where pages cracked, spines bent, and nobody smiled.1
- Not much, anyway; though it is difficult not to grin, if Ptolemaic land-leases or Greek optatives or German monographs make you giddy. [↩]