Monday, May 21, 2007

...

I got up reluctantly, put on shoes and stepped into the night air.

I was immediately disappointed.

Instead of that crisp night air, the kind that reminds you what being alive feels like, it was warm and didn't even whisper to the skin.

I walked slowly, staring at the ground, being mesmirized by the rhythmic flow of my feet...

tap.

tap.

tap.

tap.

and listening to a melancholy song, watching cracks in the sidewalk creep in and out of my vision, tracing the little imperfections in the cement, and the whole time feeling misplaced.

I abandoned the sidewalk in favor of the street. Darker, wider, a little more free. No houses with all of their stories and complications looming over my shoulder.

I thought how useless it was to feel trapped in such a big world and began tracing the cracks in the pavement with my steps.

I felt like a silly little kid, walking to the edge of the street and back to center, following the loops and twirls created by nature.

I laughed.

2 comments:

JL Kulakowski said...

One night this past winter, after enough snow had fallen that the shovels had to be employed, the children came out to play in the bedroom, and a child-like fifty-five year old man bet a thirty-eight year old woman-child that she was too old to make snow angels. The woman-child couldn't help but take the bait, and she swore if it were not so late, she'd do it in a moment. The grey haired boy pointed out the full moon.

He dared her again.

He called to the other children--the ones who still could not get by the election auditor, couldn't belly up and order a Rolling Rock, were still safe from Uncle Sam--called to them and told them that their mother was a "chicken," that her mouth just wrote a check her ass couldn't cash.

The children came to the bedroom door one by one. The first tossed in a pair of snow pants. The next, a hat and a pair of gloves. The third had his boots in his hand and offered to lace her into them.

The results are on the pics page at http://myspace.com/silencewillnotprotectyou

(And there's a pic of Alice Walker there, too)

FIERI said...

Trapped! Haha. I liked that!