The weather has been splendid in recent weeks. The sun shines without scorching. And the ceaseless wind blows a mean mood of edgy restlessness that is a perfect conduit for walking. And so of late I have relied on my legs to ferry their load of luckless duck from the civic district to both the drunken depths of downtown as well as the upper reaches of the ethnic quarter.

There is little sweat to break out, and the easy strides send one out through corners unstomped in months and reveal discoveries of refuges in retreat. Old school eateries in premises of vintage have given way to flourescent fixtures in harshest white. Even the foot-five-way that used to bridge the stalls and the street is now gated behind a glass wall.

A former lunchtime niche is nowhere to be found. There is only a lonely calico, more kitten than cat, but already sterilised and sweetly affectionate in the manner of felines who have never forgotten how it feels like to be forsaken and forlorn. A nearby field is freshly ploughed, its waterlogged valleys dug out to avert its slow march back to swamp state. The unleashed earth offered rich pickings for a pair of night herons, who plucked largish morsels from the tracks of digging implements in full view of fragrant inns and eminent centres of entertainment.

I chose to walk through the fringes, by roads christened by starlight and flanked by avenues of broad green. This sector of the city is haunted by silence (at least on such nights) and the unexpected space is disconcertingly bleak – bare of story and perhaps born of an aborted plan that languishes in abeyance. I hate to admit it, but I am unhinged and unsettled by your absence. With each step, the body surges forward and a flicker of fear rises and fades, an offbeat in transition from once regular rhythms. I find myself prone to the very sense of need my shattered heart seeks to deny in self defence. I cannot see far ahead and thus can only offer but a shared measure of the formless hope that sustains this soul in this time of detachment.