i ambled slowly around the block and then sat on the front stoop
i like to sit on the top step and look down on the people and dogs passing by
especially late on a summer night-it's like a slow parade
a young man and woman walked past-a handsome young man and pretty young woman
the man in a seersucker suit and the woman in an old-fashioned summer dress-and they were walking a bit apart from one another with a space between them
and the man was looking straight ahead and the woman had her arms crossed against her chest, hugging herself, looking down at her feet, at her toes that peeked out the open fronts of her shoes
and they both had the same gleefully suppressed smile on their faces
and i knew that they freshly in love
perhaps they had fallen in love having dinner in some restaurant with a garden or tables on the sidewalk
perhaps they had not even kissed yet
and they thought they had their whole lives to walk close together, touching, and wanted to anticipate the moment they touched for as long as possible
and they passed by without noticing me
something about watching them made me feel sad
i think it was too lovely:
the summer night, the opened-toed shoes, their face rapt with momentarily tamped-down joy
i felt i had witnessed their happiest moment, the pinnacle, and they were already walking away from it, but they did not know it
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