Hope for a better future, then head that way.

From Alfred’s journal

A woman sat on the bench by the library all afternoon with a folded paper in her coat pocket, taking it out and putting it back. I watched from the gutter above her for most of that time, which is longer than I usually give anyone. For years I thought hoping was the whole of it, that if you wanted a thing hard enough the world bent a little toward you; I wished myself into feathers once and took it as proof. But she sat there wanting, and the paper stayed folded, and the light went orange and then gray. Hope for a better future, then head that way. She left at dusk and went east, toward the bus, and I do not know if that was the direction of the paper or just the direction of home.