Night was the better time of day. There was no one out and about. Everything was quieter, more subtle, and more peaceful. You didn't have to tear through the currents of people - making this pointless trek across a canvas of black and gray like you did when the sun was up, your eyes darting, daring to meet the gaze of others, of faces happy and sad, expressions masked and feigned. No. It was different at night.

You didn't have to walk swiftly or edgily, like you did in the day. You didn't have to walk passed all of those passing people, puddles and pebbles. You had the time to take in the ghosting moon in Her beauty, to watch Her milky luminous light dance with the stars.

She'd been out here now for several hours, this lone figure. She watched the last sliver of white lining dissolve into the ugliness of the gray clouds, indignantly scowling at how the day - no, at how the year - had been. Watching the sun set made her madder. The day was another wasted opportunity. But who cared? Obviously, she didn't.

She looked to her shoes, the brown lines broken, her shoelaces tattered. Then, absentmindedly, she traced the ribbon of hoary guiltily and fixed her sadden gaze to the rocks and puddles obscured on the blacktop. What if he was walking at this very hour - like her - in the darkness? What if she was just another pebble - or another girl - he happened to carelessly pass? If it were just the two of them, making their way to nowhere, and each got a glimpse of the other, who would look first? Would he take the care of experience to observe her? Or would he just leave her to the cold?

Someone passed her in the streets, and she thought he looked like him but he wasn’t. No. He was just a stranger.

She couldn’t hold the tears anymore.