What I love about cities....

I've never understood this bittersweet narcissism within myself. I love to wander lonely streets in unknown cities. To find a cafe and order a coffee and think to myself -- here I am, known to no one, drinking my coffee and reading my paper, living in my own head. To sit somewhere just barely out of the rain, and declare that my fortress. I think of myself in the third person: Who is he? What is his mystery? I have explained before how I'm attracted to anonymous restaurants where I can read my book and look forward to rice pudding for desert. I see a lonely, leather glove discarded on the pavement and my mind races to create the mystery of the lost glove. I envision the erotic smell of her perfume mixed with leather. I think who dropped it? Did she do so in anger, frustration with a lover. Maybe, it was a gift and she is frantic with anxiety searching for it at this moment. Here is where I live and to leave that warm place and enter the dark city is a strange pleasure, nostalgia perhaps.