I watch the weaning day trace ribbons in the sky outside this Bayers café window. The last of the light darts behind street posts and rooftops, embalming any sense of the natural world from this concrete hillside. The very stragglers of life seem to flee into the gentle cracks wiggling into the pavement. Perchance there the earth may offer a warm bed for the night.

A sickly blue begins to tug down on the tendrils of the once cheerful summer sky, much like closing the shades in a cheap hotel room, leaving the world to pull the covers over its head and be lulled asleep by the soft glow of holes in the patchwork. If only there were a ’Do not disturb’ card to put on the door.

A token of light clinks off the window as I watch a young man raise his camera and poise himself, his thin brown hair struggling to stand in the increasingly aggravated breeze. An elderly man behind him too feels the strain as he is to be the last to walk before the rain. Both are pictures through the fogging window.

I glance down at the pale New York Times flung onto the small table in front of me. Grains in the wood scream in agony as the christened edges slice white across its surface. I try to read but the ink is smeared. It occurs to me that this crinkled mat of parchment is the only trace of me ever being here.

Perhaps the young man outside the window sees what I see, even though I know he cannot see me. And I know that when the lens winks it will tell of a lonely newspaper and a shadowed chair, but perhaps the one inspired artist who came along with a camera will try to read the tears between the lines - a forgotten man’s words to the world.