today i planned to write a couple of lines
what exactly — i didn't know
replies to emails, something from prose, even a couple of notes, something small — quite undefined, but i wanted these sentences to please me

with this desire i went outside and headed in some direction
sooner or later, coming across a shop, i would buy something there and head back home
that was how i ended up on a fairly large street with several lanes of traffic in a small district, where on a saturday afternoon people hurried to visit the shops
in the still-warm wind and already yellow leaves i could feel the beginning of autumn

having passed a music school, a hairdresser's and a multitude of yellow residential buildings
i crossed an intersection, on the corner of which stood a gray catholic church of a futuristic appearance
i had never seen people entering or leaving it

past the intersection, a little to the side, there was a bar with a terrace
soon they would remove it
but for now a couple or three people sat there
by evening there would be more

ahead i could see 3 benches
positioned not in the most fortunate way
they extended halfway into the road and halfway toward the houses
it would have been better to place them deeper into the street
where there was no traffic noise anymore

the two benches on the sides were free, while the central one was occupied
as i came closer, i made out three people: two already not young — a man and a woman in light gray jackets, they looked tired
they sat with a boy locked between them

he was wearing a turtleneck sweater and a raincoat: blue with some large, overly bright triangles, green, purple and dull pink
his reddish hair, cut in a bowl style, extended at the back almost to his shoulders
the bottom of this extension curled into little rings
the rings moved in the wind

the boy's face was like an egg: oval, pale, swollen
the lower part seemed to press his small, closely set eyes into his forehead
his mouth opened wide, making no sound
the boy looked somewhere indistinctly to the side and upward, above the houses
periodically moving his head quickly to the other side

i walked past, although i already wanted to sit down and rest

when i got home, i wrote everything down, changing nothing:
a noisy street, the beginning of autumn, a music school, a hairdresser, yellow houses and a futuristic catholic church
a couple of benches, a not-young tired couple and a down boy between them
what to do with these lines, i did not know
but i felt lighter
as if something like this was supposed to happen and was supposed to be written down

noticing a bright printout on a pole, thickly wrapped with tape, i remembered that today there was a kite festival

with the launch of numerous kites on the field

i had already seen such a printout on another pole
both of them had been wrapped with tape
then, apparently, they had begun to come loose from the wind and so were wrapped again

this festival was even held annually
i had never been to it

there were a couple of hours left before the end of the evening, i thought i could go to the field and take a couple of decent pictures of the kites

the camera was always with me
i liked the way it swung around on my neck and hit me heavily in the chest with every step
i don't know why

the yellow sunset sky above the field was cut through by kites floating in all sorts of shapes and colors

their strings stretched down to numerous families with children
many had blankets spread out with paper plates and leftovers of food on them

there were also many individuals running between the groups, who had also come to take pictures of the kites

there was a substantial difference between us
i had not planned this outing in advance
it was a coincidence
which could just as easily not have happened
in fact, until then, it hadn't

i think it was noticeable from the outside
from the leftovers of food you could tell that the groups had spent the whole day on the field
they had seen both a clear sunny sky and the sunset

among the kites evenly covering the sky i noticed a bald patch
under it 6-7 people were huddled together
i pointed the camera at them
and used a strong zoom
the group looked like this:
a couple or three children with tear-stained eyes with their parents standing behind them
five meters away from them lay a large colorful mountain of tangled kites
it was impossible to distinguish their outlines:
now it was a mass of strings, rods and fabric
the ends of these strings stretched toward three more people
whom everyone was watching
a not-young man and woman with a tired look
sitting on the ground
without haste and somehow matter-of-factly they manipulated the strings
around the boy
the boy was half-lying on his side, his legs tucked back
several strings tightly intertwined his legs
went upward, pressing his arms against his shoulder blades
passed along his face
tilting his nose upward and thinning his sparse reddish straight fringe before going back
the boy lay motionless with his tongue sticking out
his small, closely set eyes
looked at the sunset, squinting and watering from the brightness
he tried not to look away
in this position the not-young couple who had untangled him looked
like hunters who had caught a wild boar
which was enjoying the sunset for the last time

i took a picture