Parting Gestures.

The last promise, brought with it such hope.
The sweetest surprise only half wrapped,
A gift of wine in a cheap paper bag.

It was the dreary corner of the city centre, the looming, boarded doorway where you would expect to see only urine and take-away wrappers. I had been kicking along an old plastic bottle, partially burned at the tip (though of course, not by I), singing quietly a sweet, if not fickle, rendition of Frank Sinatra's Coffee Song. A slight clearing of the throat took my attention, for not many were around at this hour.
"Have you a particular place you were going?".
Her voice had a light tone, as if she had not long taken a sip of a soothing cup of tea. Her appearance suggested the opposite, a beanie hat slouched to one side over the dank drabs of dark hair hanging loosely upon an unidentifiable band shirt. I did not see her at first, for so consumed was her figure by the lightless doorway that i had assumed the voice had come from behind me.
"I suppose not", came an unexpectedly natural reply on my part.
It was then that I witnessed the inhalation of a cigarette, the tip illuminating gently the soft curve of her chin, thus bringing the rest of her into better focus. I was no longer walking, and the plastic bottle slowly span to a complete still.


She had pulled herself up onto the wall of King's Park, I had placed myself casually against said wall, between her and a scatter of shattered green glass. I watched it's slight reflections of the night as she smoked another cigarette. I asked her the point in such a habit, to which she replied simply 'Women's things'.
The lingering smell of smoke drew across our urban sky, and not a star shone there, so heavily coated in the dull orange street lights as we were.
"You see, it's only the people like us that will dwell in such an awful sort'a place like this at this hour", a distant siren laced the horizon of her words, "We may have a place to go. But its not the place we want to go to".
Not once do i recall her looking at me. She just seemed to speak, and lead. It were as though she had found her audience for the evening, her disciple of whom she could relay her stories and teachings to, and it was simply my job to take my seat, withdraw my pen and log my notes.
I did not learn very much that night, I took nothing away from the experience. But unlike any other situation I have encountered since, I took with me the experience itself. The night simply had an impact, it coated me with a layer defineable by others. I was a marked person. A person of her teaching.
She said;
"And so what if we lay in the streets at night? And what of it, if I choose to steal my food? And I do choose to. There is a dew so early in the morning, a sweet glistening dew, it's as though this entire, horrid bloody park is scattered with diamonds (here she gestured her arm to King's Park behind us, with its torn trees, its burnt patches in the grass, litter in various corners and tramp resting in a sleeping bag). The small gift of the night.
So limited are these jewels that with the hour of sunrise they are gone. And I wish only to view them, I will not steal that so plentifully given. That sort of thing just needs to be seen. The night gives you that ability."
Morning must soon have been approaching, I knew not only due to the cool breeze that swept itself across the bare of my hands and face, but from the way in which she stirred ever so slightly. The gleam of her eyes from between those drabs of hair, reflecting the orange of the lamp lights, the damp of the paving slabs.
"You probably won't see me again. I will come with the night, and leave with the morning, only to lay myself in another area by the next dusk. I never look back, I never go back. I want to see and experience all that the night has seen and experienced. For laying in its beauty warms me, it warms me bones and it puts a glittering hope into eyes that did not see enough in early life. ".
Some time passed without word after this, she sighed once or twice (though this could have been the breeze or perhaps a bus' breaks some where a couple of blocks over) and a car skidded nearby.
"What would you roam, if you took your choice?" she asked.
I pondered for a moment, but that moment mostly consisted of my believing I had been waiting for this question all my life; "Dreams".
"You'd roam dreams?"

Her leaving had much less impact that her 'appearing'. She had begun to kick her heel against the wall, before slipping down with a gentle thud. She didn't mutter another word, she leant back with a cool, half-smile, raised the palm of her hand in a motionless gesture of 'Good bye' and appeared to look straight through me. This lasted 6 seconds, she turned on her recently bopping heel and began to tread off down the path.
I watched her form sloping off into the moist blur that was my view of the city, her dull colours began to mingle happily with the scenery now enveloping her.
I witnessed her last betrayal to her teaching, I saw the bend of her arm, and the temporary glow that was her inhaling through her cigarette. She had been looking back for some time. And, still, I did not raise my hand in any parting gesture.