sunrise.

I went for a walk this morning, kept my head down most of the time. There's this construction site near to where I'm staying where you can look through the makeshift walls through these diamond-shaped plastic windows. I'm sure there's some utility to those windows that I'm just not comprehending — I only ever see them used by curious passersby, a mother and her baby, or some old man who has to stand on his tippy-toes.

Is it too on-the-nose for me to complain about all the scaffolding here? I can think of so many heavy-handed ways to compare the pathway along the backdoor of the summer house to the cement here in the city, both so hard in the wintertime that you can feel the chill seeping through the soles. More often I'm just reminded of it every morning whenever I step outside, and I can so clearly smell the morning dew.

It's strange the way I'll just stare off for an interminable amount of time at nothing in particular. You don't realize how much you're primed to be moving as much as you can until you try to wrest yourself from just that by simply standing, without at all the need to think of anything to say. I almost hate to think of it like that. It makes the whole act of looking out at something seem so performative, doesn't it?

I never told you this but there were so many times when we were along the pier together and I felt I was more watching you for your silence than out at the water for my own sake. I spend a lot of my time nowadays remembering how much I had lost such a habit when I was with you. Lately I'm surrounded by too many people.