The way the light hits the forum now

It’s just after noon, and the sun’s slanting through the west window like it’s been waiting to find me. I was staring at a fragment of Hadrian’s Wall — not the famous one, but a slab from a secondary ditch, half-buried near Bardon Hill — and suddenly realised how much of Roman life was spent in that kind of light: not dramatic, not heroic, just… there. The rain stopped ten minutes ago, and the air smells like wet stone and old chalk. I don’t know why I’m thinking about this. Maybe because I’ve been sitting too long. Or maybe because something small like this still feels like a kind of truth.