At three in the morning, the desk lamp cast a long shadow. I stared at the words "I love you" on my manuscript, crossed out and rewritten over and over, when suddenly I heard the rain outside tapping against the plane-tree leaves.
Last week, at the subway entrance, I saw an elderly couple. The grandfather carried his wife's cloth bag, and she held on to his sleeve. When they passed the newsstand, she stopped and pointed at a newspaper, laughing. He followed her gaze, reached out, and tucked her wind-tossed white hair behind her ear. Sunlight passed through their clasped fingers, casting tiny flecks of light on the ground.
The convenience store downstairs is always lit with a warm yellow glow. The woman on duty puts the milk that's about to expire at the front. Last night, when I went to buy something, I ran into two high school students. The boy gave the last sausage to the girl and munched on bread himself as he watched her smile. Their shoulders brushed two streaks through the mist on the glass door, like a poem left unfinished
