City writing day: Customs House

We wondered at the red and whiteness of it, the model of the city, the discovery of new space. We found the reading room with its long ranks of brown wooden tables, and glowing lamps. We sat beside the reference books, dictionaries, books of proverbs and idioms and the dictionary of the underworld. We sat in the long light from the tall windows in the silent, book-lined room, and we wrote.

I also stared out the window at a slice of sky.