New York City, November 16, 2015

★★★ It was mild enough that the ongoing fight over the younger boy’s winter coat could be suspended. Building corners were sharpened. Light and reflected light turned the two boxes of a crosswalk signal into three boxes’ worth of shadow: two faint ones flanking a dark overlapping one in the middle. The temperature was in the office climate control system’s zone of haplessness, leaving the indoor temperature in the sort of chill that convinces the deep brain that outside must be worse. A shallow recess running up the brick wall by the parking lot became a chasm of shadow.