This actually just happened

I see a ping-pong ball fall from the sky. It falls from the sky and bounces, springs and ping-pongs down the high street. Comes to a stop in the gutter.

By the side of that gutter is a woman, oblivious to the falling ball she’s marching up and down on the spot, attention on her grandson toddling his way towards her. She wraps him up in their reunion, swizzes and swirls him around, and when she lets him down again he’s dizzy, he falls over, lands on his hands right in front of the ball.

There’s a moment, him eying the ball up, I think he might reach out for it. But he’s grazed his palms and he needs to hold them up for inspection, for verification that he can cry. He is scooped up, petted into his push chair and pushed away from the ball.

The ball rests a while. Even I don’t give it any attention. But when I do, when I look out at it again, it is at the exact same time that a lady, an older one in a bright green coat and with long black hair falling about her face, stoops down and picks the ball up. I watch her walk down the street with it, her face mischievous like she's won a secret prize, the ping-pong in her palm.