He had only moved to the city recently
He had only moved to the city recently and was not yet familiar with the circuitous roads that seem to meander and twist back into yet further streets named after trees and tropical plants. Cordia into bamboo into oleander into aralia into poinciana. As he walked along the road he paused to try and locate the source of a particular odour. It was a sweet smell. Of fermenting fruit. And seeing nothing that might account for it he continued walking.
There was nothing especially uniform about the houses in this suburb except that each appeared to maintain an indifference to the other. Each house whether carefully maintained or roughly sitting behind metal linked fences was a territory unto itself and in this sense each distinct rectangular kingdom was like the next and the man expected that each housed a family that was much like the next: husband, wife, children, pet. Any individuality was lost on the man, who walked with the slightest stoop, eyes pinched in the sunlight. Whatever he expected from these houses the man saw no one as he walked. The streets were empty and apart from the rustle of lizards as they emptied from the sidewalk sunshine into underbrush and leafmeal the only other noise came from birds.
Small, white-faced double-barred finches peeped and hurried into dried grass nests constructed amongst the leaves of pandanus. Olive backed oriole swooped ponderously then disappeared into a mess of greenery while bar-shouldered doves, with their rust-red necks, scaled with tiny feathers, scattered amongst the seeds and debris of pathways. The man, who may not have noticed these things, still walked and in the heat of early afternoon began to tire. His shoulders stooped further and he felt within himself a quickening of the blood, an unease that he carried with him suddenly bursting. He appeared as a man who had at once remembered that he had forgotten something and a concerned and pained expression fell upon his face. He was not certain why he had become downcast but were it not for his surroundings, he thought, he would have dropped to his knees and wept. He thought of his wife and family and friends, and felt for all this utterly alone.
The man was not prone to melancholy and he gathered his thoughts amidst the uncertainty of his sudden sadness. He wondered what sort of self examination of his inner feelings might be necessary to determine precisely why he felt so overcome with an emotion that he imagined approximated grief. For a moment he considered howling, expelling this uncomfortable stone that swelled and constricted in his stomach, but at the last moment, as he had just begun to raise his head but before he had urgently thrust his face skyward and opened his mouth, he hesitated and instead continued to walk.