First Day.
Wellington. Observing this city I've called my home and will again.
The waterfront is crowded, warm, bustling. Filled with people skiving off work, stretching their lunch hour to the limit.
People watching.
There is a woman. She calls loudly to an acquaintance, too loudly.
She is walking backwards now. Tilting her head up to the sky, stretching her arms back.
Performing. For who?
For her friend? He isn't watching.
An audience of strangers, filled with their own concerns?
Someone she loved once, briefly?
In moments like these she half-thinks he might pass by. And he must see how good she is, how alive she is without him.
She acts exuberance well. I wonder if she knows that she is acting at all.

There is a man sitting next to me. Close enough to see what I am writing but not read it.
Small spidery marks.
He sat down quite close to me, and pulled out a book.
I don't know that I could enjoy a book, so close to stranger.
In a minute I will get up and head for the concrete steps that I like, close to the water.

A man came to me once there. He said that it was getting late, that it would begin to be dark soon.
He said that I should go home and keep safe.
He said that he had 12 pretty daughters like me at home.
He said that once he was chased by a seagull.
He said that God talks to him, but the world thinks he's crazy.
He said, who needs a belt anyway, when you've got a bit of rope.
I thanked him and finished writing a letter that I would take home and forget to send.
Until it was too late, and had lost any meaning it had in the first place.