She walked until her
shoes stopped sounding
like footsteps and started
sounding like a metronome
counting the distance
between her and the door
she had not yet decided
to use.
The streetlight at the
corner had been blinking
all evening. She watched
it long enough to map
its pattern — three
slow, one fast, two
slow, one absent. She
thought about how
everything had a pattern,
even the things that
pretended not to.
Including the thought that
kept returning to the
question of whether she
should keep walking.
She sat on the curb.
The curb was cold. She
did not mind the cold.
The cold was honest in a
way the questions were
not.
After a while she stood
up. She did not decide
to go home. She simply
stood up and let her
feet choose. They chose
the long way. They chose
the street where the
bakery had its shutters
half-down and the smell
of yesterday's bread
still lived in the
doorway.
She took the long way as
a small agreement with
herself that not every
evening had to end with
an answer. Some evenings
just had to end.