Wisp

The walls were painted a speckled blue. Funny thing about speckles is they mask their own decay. An old man sat at the window table meant for two. He was halfway through both a butter croissant and the Sunday crossword.

Outside the trees had long since started to don their winter colors. A stale gray sky pressed down upon his view of the plaza. Shop-goers did not dawdle, but took to their tasks with a resoluteness that he brokered distance between them and their surroundings. Including the cold.

"There's not really much more to it," he thought aloud, tapping a cane against the empty chair next to him.

At the utterance, the barista looked over at him briefly, deemed it safe to ignore, and went back to his phone.