The City in Winter

Amsterdam in winter has fewer colours and somehow more detail. #

I needed outside today. Not escape, just air. We walked for hours, the kind of January walk that makes your nose cold first and your feet complain much later, past dark water and bare trees and bicycles that look permanently damp. Winter strips the city down. Brick, glass, water, branches, sky. The Christmas decorations are slowly disappearing but some lights remain, including ours because I have declared them necessary infrastructure. We stopped for coffee, wandered without needing to accomplish anything, bought bread on the way back. Amsterdam looked calm. I was grateful for calm.

Remember me, Eclipse.