Chalk
Again, a walk several hours after midnight. On my way south to the water, I noticed drawn in chalk on the ground "This way," with a squiggly arrow. Being obedient to such orders, especially when walking at night, I followed. Further arrows, some straight, some merrily squiggly, some doubled on the street, made themselves evident: "I love you," "the definition of sweetness," "you made me the person I am" "you make me happy," "you make me proud," read the subsequent arrows on subsequent streets. It being late, I had no real fear of meeting either the proximal writer or reader. I couldn't help but feel a bit touched, regardless of whether I saw myself as writer or recipient; I was glad too to have seen the "this way" first. I saw a small gaggle of youngish persons on the opposite side of the street on the way, their porch lit up to suggest a party ending. To that point, the messages had been more straightforward, less tender, and I feared that my trail would end having been an advertisement for some random occasion of drunkenness, but no arrow pointed me across the street. At a further corner, a small, loud band of large youngish men passed and began following me; having been jumped by a similar group once in the past on the streets of Providence, I picked up my pace, and began to get a bit nervous when I realized that I hadn't seen an arrow in some time, and feared that I'd lost the trail and would have to double back past the potential danger or give up the search. At the corner, however, I was again ushered onward, and they stooped down behind me on what was by then the far side of Hope. Soon enough I found another, and continued on to a small park, with two benches outside the gate, and a small playground at the foot of a small hill. "Over there," "On the hill," my trail read, as it began to rain softly. Sat on the hill for a bit, letting the rain fall over me. It doesn't always, but it often does feel as though soft rains are the closest possible thing the natural world can do to an embrace. Feeling a bit dramatic, I wanted more, a torrent, but I was thankful within a few minutes when it didn't come, and the light rains continued. I rose, and determined that I should learn where the arrows originated, where the individual lived for whom these were properly intended; I feared that the rain might have washed them away, and indeed, by the time I'd returned to the spot where I'd first spotted the trail, the markings were almost gone, and the rain, though still far from torrential, had picked up significantly. I persevered in trying to follow them, and got as far as the top of Wickenden, only a block from where I'd begun, before I was quite wet and any trace of chalk quite gone. Over the few blocks back home, the rain slackened and then stopped, leaving medium-wide rivers finding their ways down the street, dark against the pavement. In the streetlights, the standing rippling waves that ran along them diagonally looked precisely woven; with enough light, they might've woven together all of Providence.