While the Can Cools
A drop of condensation on the can ran down the back of his hand. He didn't drink. He simply sat still and watched the people passing. He met no one's eyes, and no one stayed beside him. The can was open, but what he wanted was not the can. And so I know. That there are nights when you want to sit somewhere. Nights of doing nothing, of no one looking for you, of waiting for time to carry you away; the can, as it cooled, waited through them without a word.
On nights like that I look at my shadow in the glass of the bus shelter. Until the streetlights beyond the glass went out one by one, I checked the clock on my phone again and again. The figure in the glass simply stood there. Before I knew it, the clock had passed midnight.
The shadow that shelter's glass held must also have given way to an empty space once the bus had passed. I've stood in a place like that too, so I know how quiet what remains is after such a night has gone.
There was a time an old thermos sat on a bench in the park at night. The lid was open, and no steam rose anymore. No one sat down beside it.
The steam had long since left the thermos, but the fact that the lid was open remained as proof that someone's hand had touched it. What was left was the place that hand's warmth would have reached, that emptiness.
Sitting on the bus stop bench, I watched a coffee on the next seat growing cold on its own. The person who left it could be seen far off, past the traffic light, and I watched the cup cool toward a temperature it would never quite reach. Even nights like this know how to recognize each other.
I know that the hours of cooling temperatures pass at the same speed even in different places. While the light changed and changed again, the coffee beside you and the can before me must have stopped at the same point.
As the night air turned cold, the lights of the corner shop in the alley were going out. Beside it a long-haired dog sat for a long while, then slowly rose, as if not waiting for anyone, and walked off into the dark.
Where the dog had risen, a warm mark still remained. Passing through that space, the heat that touched my toes was the same temperature as the spot where I had sat a while.