Laughing Knees

The roof of the monsoon passed earlier this evening, regaling the city with a fiery evening sunset and later opening up the sky to the stars. I went out for a short stroll, to buy some milk and some pudding dessert, passing from shadow to shadow. The neighborhood cats perched atop the alley walls, staring at me as I passed beneath them. One family of newly moved-in neighbors, foreigners, their British accents ringing out incongruously in the still Japanese night, sat in their tiny rear garden, drinking beer and laughing. A party of teenage boys squatted in the corner of the nearby playground, smoking and bantering. A woman stood by the open window of her kitchen, humming to herself and washing dishes.

All these people. Day by day it all goes on.