sidewalk scribbling

It hasn't rained for a few weeks, and the days have taken on a pale, watercolour look. Four children in faded sweatshirts push each other across the road, dusty trees edge the street and a woman in a red dupatta walks down the lane. As the sun slowly shakes off his blankets and brightens his face, it starts to get warmer. Soon I'll be able to slip off my socks and jumper. Soaking up the sun on the last day of December in 2023. I found a typed diary page from ten - no wait, actually  20 years ago. ( how am I already old enough to be reminiscing about things from 2 decades ago?) It was an ordinary journal entry on a summer day in Karachi and it made me smile. The mundane details of what I wore that day and what I ate, the comfortingly uneventful musings and vague dreams of a 16 year old watching TV all day instead of going to school. That snippet of my life from so long ago brought with it a languid and sweet kind of nostalgia, mild, soft, settling itself gently around my sh