Even at this early hour, the deep, jewel-blue of evening is already fading to night’s darker hues beyond the buildings. Still in the city’s small heart, though, the sky glows and refracts between windows, brightened by the lights from inside, the street-lamps outside.
There is a quickening, an energy as commuters move away from the centre, a flow that pulls us all along for a block or two until the shift to calm that comes with the transition to neighbourhoods.
Then it is dark, night descends quickly, a blanket sprinkled with the twinkling of porch lights. The cold wind refreshes, blows nostalgia at me through a small park; the scent of fallen leaves.
This is home. It is familiar. Canadian.
I love this about where I live – the familiarity, the nostalgia, the ease of moving around here, of knowing what to expect, season after season.
And yet, the other half of my heart continues to tug me, as it always has, toward Ireland.