Lonesome Traveler

"Its scope and purpose is simply poetry, or, natural description."
- Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler.

I was hanging with some teachers from Volunteers in Asia, another program with teachers here in Dalat.  I walked home late last night.  In the cool calm of the late evening air I strolled among the empty streets and the blank houses.  The bustle of the day's activity long over, the streets where now barren, empty of the vendors and their exotic fruits and leafy greens, empty of the half wild pet dogs, empty of the busy people, empty of drone of motorbikes, empty of everything and everyone.  I walked in the middle of the road where the street-lamp light shone, away from the dark along the shuttered up storefronts.  The occasional light lit a window or two along the street, a television flickered in the distance, and I walked.  It’s three O'clock and all's quiet, no late night revelry, no shouting, no noise, no nothing to worry about.  I walked, and climbed the high fence as the night guard slept at the gate to our campus, and as I walked I wondered if they had locked the door to my building, and felt relief when I found that they hadn't.  I slept well that evening.