(The Walk to) The Alley

The air was soft. Not the stifling heat of mid to late summer, and not the cool of early spring, but somewhere perfectly comfortable in the middle, with only a slight warm breeze blowing in gusts, every so often. She had been walking for nearly 40 minutes, without intention. She had started downtown, near the river. After staring into the flowing brown water for nearly the same amount of time, processing, feeling, she got up, started walking, and didn’t bother to stop. With each step, she was closer to home, and it seemed increasingly futile to seek out a public transit stop, especially if it meant going out of the way. She knew exactly where she was. She had driven this road many times throughout the year and a half she’d been in this city. Her cell phone, dead in her pocket, was of no significant use at this moment anyway, as if it knew that she needed this long moment of silence. So she walked, and kept walking, trying to let the city cleanse her of what the river did not. Emotions and thoughts kept flowing, colliding, and swelling into depression that alternated with warrior resilience. All the while, she kept putting one foot in front of the other, drawing nearer to home, unaware of the metaphorical meaning of her steps. While fighting with her internal workings, she didn’t think about how as she moved toward home, so too does one move through life, managing all of its happenings, surprises, and gifts along the way. Until finally, as night was falling, she found herself close, her building in sight. She turned the corner into the alley entrance of the building, the neighbor’s lights shining from their windows bringing her back to the world outside her head and introducing new wonderings about whether they faced similar turmoil. A wall-mounted streetlight lit her steps toward the gate at the other end of the alley, where more light beckoned from the other side of the bars. She proceeded coolly toward the entrance, thankful for the journey, thankful for the comfort of home.