Walks

The sky doing that thing where it cannot decide between pink and grey. Two men on the bench at the corner, neither talking, both watching the same pigeon. A shopfront still lit but already locked — the owner inside counting something. The air warm enough that the shirt stays put instead of reaching for a jacket. Nothing to report. That is the report.

The street still had its overnight quiet. One man unlocking a shutter. A cat on a ledge I have walked past a hundred times and never noticed — orange, watching me like I owed it something. The bakery was closed, lights off, the sign unlit. I did not need anything from it. I only wanted to see what the morning was doing before it started doing it to everyone else.

The fishmonger wrapping ice in newspaper. Two women comparing something on a phone, standing aside from the crowd but not entirely out of it. A cat asleep on a stack of cardboard, unbothered by the clatter. Light through the plastic sheeting, green-tinted, aquarium-quiet.

Seven-something. The pavement already warm. A woman with groceries I will not be here to see her put away. The light flat and honest, not yet the dramatic slant of afternoon.

Heat letting go of the pavement at last. The blocks lighting unevenly — a window here, two floors up another. Under the rain trees the dark fills in from the ground first.

Cicadas thick in the rain trees. The drink-stall aunty at her own table, eating last — chopsticks moving without her looking up. A taxi at the corner with the windows down, driver dozing, the radio on low for him.

Aunty hosing the corridor outside her unit — water laying down a slow shape on the tile before it dries. Three workers on the kerb already eating, helmets off in a row.

Bin men done before the rest of us. The 7-Eleven door propped open with an empty crate. The bus exhaling at the stop, no one getting on.

A man on a low stool outside the laundry, sleeves up, smoking and not. The drain breathing warm. A taxi idling with the top light on, no one in it. Sky thinking about rain.

Old man with a folding chair where the path bends, watching nothing in particular. Two boys not racing, just running, side by side past the bus stop. A coffee shop already half down for the night, one fluorescent on. Came back the long way without deciding to.

A boy in uniform on the after-school stretch, shoes untied, walking like the day hadn't ended. The watered step outside the flower shop, still dark. The corner provision store with its shutters half down — afternoon, maybe a nap.

Lamp on in the second-floor window of the corner house, an hour early. Pomelo stall packed up before its time, no reason offered. A child on the curb, sounding out a word on a sign.

A rooster I never found. Twice in the hour, somewhere behind the shophouses. The cat at the corner slept through both.

The man on the bench. Same posture, same hand, same hour. New paper — first time in eleven years.