The Moon, Again

Walked out under the streetlights. Eastwards the white lob of the moon, dwindling from full; westwards the illuminated green glass towers of the Convention Center. I shrugged into my jacket, and stopped, resting a knee on the brickwork wall, and looked at the night.

Took a bit of something out of my pocket and touched it to my lips. Doubting all my decisions, and painfully aware of how many moons have already run out under my fingers. An old song from my childhood, about rain-drenched streets, came to my mind. Accidents of time and space. This wall, this knee, this evening. It all could have been different.

I turned my talisman in my fingers. I'm not such an unwary prey of samsara as to believe the whole story of loss and missed opportunity that its refraction of the streetlights told me. But still. You can't help but listen.