My slow scraping shoes…
marking time like the drummer boy
of an army awaiting the inevitable,
but soldiering on anyhow.
Those shoes
they’re mellifluous white noise,
juxtaposed with the honking and
and the coughing and the shouting
and the gray
and the smothering cold and blinding gold
of the breaking of the day
which seems it will never end as it bleeds into
the hundreds that made up yesteryear.
skrsch, skrsch, skrsch.
skrsch- they drag,
skrsch- they slow,
skrsch- they stop.
Everyday staring at my shoes,
satisfied by every passing pair,
because they were carrying by eyes that would never catch mine.
Until today.
Before me, a pair of sensible black leather shoes,
stopped equidistant from what was between the tips of my brown leather brogues and hers
-cracked ground-
ruptured like a cinderblock by the hand of a practiced artist from one of those movies I watched as a kid.
“Sclerenchyma – strengthening tissue in a plant, formed from cells with thickened, typically lignified, walls.”
…
…
I-…
…
“Sclerenchyma, it’s how plants, break through the concrete. They’re little, but they’re a lot stronger than they look. Tiny, little guys can break through damn near anything.”
…
I-…
…
“Hi!”
I was never struck so dumb as the moment I slowly scanned my way from her sensible shoes-.. Oxfords
if you were wondering,
to her too tight, blue jeans, gripping her thighs
like my virginal little fingers couldn’t have even known they wanted to at the time,
sticking
for a moment to her black leather belt and golden cherry tree buckle,
my stomach bluttering like a million flutterbys as I passed hers,
my heart stopping as I realized I’d reached the bit of crop top skimming her still breasts, unlike mine, which were heaving because I finally realized that the desert in my throat was from hyperventilation and like a fool I’d stood stunned for-…
Hi.
“Are you alright?”
I was just admiring the little flowers growing out of the pavement
“Yeah. Sorry, about earlier, sometimes when I don’t know what to say, I just start spouting facts hoping I say something interesting. But somehow I felt I had to say something.”
Yeah,
I get that.
I never know what to say
either
So
usually I just say
what I’m thinking and
people leave if they
don’t like it
“Oh? Well what are you thinking?”
flecks of green
shattering ubiquitous gray,
gave me hope for a future
where each day we are not the pall-bearers
in a corporate sponsored march
to the industrial dirge, playing
at the wake of freedom,
as the other virtues mourn her loss.
“Oh.”
Yeah, I’m sorry-..
“You’re beautiful.”
Zexton Davis 