i remember walking one side of town to the other alone one night in january or february it s like in an old movie from some other land it lasted for hours only streetlights and the grating of gravel in pedestrian subways i remember some trees which stood black and naked weather beaten hollows of snow with sparse lumps of ice been scraped off by the wind alone and on the stairs before i left one of the girls had surprisingly given me a kiss stung in the cold long after