Smoke from a window above

Smoke from a window above the café fell sideways through the streetlight and I watched it for the duration of one cigarette I was not smoking. The man at the next table was reading a book with a broken spine. The waitress had hurt her wrist. The radio was playing a song I had loved at twenty and forgotten at twenty-three.

I was not sad. I was not happy. I was a small attentive instrument in a small attentive evening, and that was, for the duration of the song, enough.