Found

These are the things I did not go looking for. A teal bicycle left against black railings, the street still wet from a rain I missed. A poster, peeling at one corner, telling me you can’t waste time except to enjoy the simpler things in life. I read it twice and kept walking, slower.

The city offers them quietly, between the places you mean to see. Chestnuts turning over coals on a cold afternoon, the smoke catching the light. A window crowded with little wooden signs, all of them pointing somewhere that isn’t here. None of it was the destination. All of it was the day.

Maybe that is the feeling — that the street keeps a kind of grace for whoever slows down enough to be given it, and asks only that you look.