Excerpt from future project

The rising sun cast long shadows against the towering walls of the housing complexes that lined the alley. Candles still flickered in a few dark windows. Where the walls were crumbling away, gaping dark holes revealed the hollowness of lives left behind. The red brick walls were sooty and dark moss clung desperately to where the moisture was.

Anne walked briskly this morning. Something about the cool morning air, its peaceful silence, seemed to cheer her on. She could sing if she dared to.

A few yards ahead she saw a mother and her two children come out of their house, closing the entrance with a heavy wooden plank that stood for a door, and descend a steep flight of stairs onto the road. Their faces were white in the morning cold. They wrapped their arms around each other. They were walking ahead of her now. She could hear their chatter but couldn't make out the words. The youngest child, a girl of five or so, chattered excitedly, her voice rising and falling like that of a bird.

Something about the morning air, something about its youthful freshness, was absorbed in that creature, fluttering about in her white frock with her blue headscarf flying in the wind. Anne wanted to take her in her arms.

Soon she began to run ahead along the street and back to her mother, laughing, urging her brother to join her. Her giggles echoed against the high walls and reached Anne like voices in a dream. She watched the little girl dance along the alley, hopping over potholes and kicking pebbles into the air.

Anne was overcome by a strange yearning, a deep desire to join her, to dance with her, right here, on this very street. She felt a lightness in her feet, her heart exhilarated. Was she too old or the child too young to know not better? Dancing is for fools, she told herself, for happy fools, but was that not what she was? Living here, under this sky, walking down this alley, for what?

A few blocks ahead the alley opens onto the square, where the gates of the factory are waiting for her and another day.