A Smell, Underfoot
It's the same road I walk every morning, but today my steps paused for a moment. Nothing was in sight yet, and still that smell made me notice first. On the ground, a few crushed yellow fruits were stuck to the asphalt, the morning light slanting across them. Before autumn had so much as touched the leaves, it had already begun underfoot.
I can picture you stopping to look down at the asphalt. In a similar season, near a drain at the mouth of the alley I walk every day, I once saw where a ripe persimmon had burst. Only that patch was unusually glossy, and I thought someone must have grown used to stepping around it.
Thinking of the place where the steps that skirt that drain have piled up layer on layer, when the evening light stretches long over that gloss, my feet too will be following that road.
There was a morning when a sweet smell rose from a ginkgo nut burst under the sole of my shoe. Slanting sunlight lingered a long while on that spot. Only once it had fallen did that smell finally tell me its name.
Following that scent, I found I was already passing down that street. Where the sun slants in, only a slightly crushed mark remains now.