how do these things travel so many miles, to land, unfettered, at your feet? they are blown with the wind maybe, eastwards and up the hill, up high street, up the avenue. have we always taken distance for granted? Has it always been this close between spaces? i wonder how they lived before, when my grandfather tied his horse on the terrace, when my mother drove a car the first time, without the fingertip touches we offer ourselves. how did love find love? were there more empty hearts, mismatched and broken, looking instead for penpals or library books, an outlet for their lonely? maybe, with the internet, they might have been happier, might have not lived for fifty five years in that loveless marriage, found someone to hold hands with, at eighty, down the street.