Silence

It is 9:25 and I have just returned from a Sunday evening walk into the village. It is vacant. I was alone with my breathing and the crunch of gravel beneath my feet and the smell of hay fields and blossoming fruit trees and the fading light. Seldom do I experience a vacant town on a warm evening – in fact, I can’t remember the last time – it is something both eerie and romantic. It’s different from being alone in the woods, or on a farm. The empty streets and porches and stores entice and disturb me; the under-layer of our little civilization. I am right downtown and I could do almost anything without anyone ever knowing. I could write messages in wooden railings, lye down in the middle of the road, re-arrange the posters on the bulletin board, press my face up to the store windows and look inside...

Someone else’s footsteps in the distance are a threat and a mystery. If we were to cross paths, our “hello’s” would linger in the air until morning. If we were to meet eyes and hold one another’s glance, it would be a strange kind of intimacy, the two of us, there alone in the twilight. What a shame it would be to break the silence. Maybe we would bow and curtsy. Maybe we would waltz anonymously in the streets.

Maybe I should learn to waltz.