On A Late Night Run

With one thing and another I haven't been able to run much recently. In fact, I'd almost forgotten how much I enjoyed the route: the two-lane cycle path shared with returning office workers, shirts loosened at the top button, and the dark shapes of cyclists without lights. Onions browning between houses in small, furrowed fields. A woman in a golf visor holding a carrier bag open for her dog to shit into. Three vending machines, bright and incongruous beside a rice paddy. The slight incline over the railway tracks and the turn by the river. Stacks of metal beer kegs piled-up behind the Suntory brewery. Trumpet flower scent and a green and white, floodlit cube with the name of a supermarket, hanging in the night sky. The illuminated metal cylinders where I turn for home that always make me think of China. The public bathouse at the end of my street, laundry spinning in machines and an old man closing his bakery for another night. I stop by the bins, jog up nine flights of stairs, key in the door code, and stumble to my bed.