Likeness, Miniature

There's a single step that means the end of home, the beginning of all the rest. It's crooked, leaning back like a broken tooth, angled against the cracking sidewalk. There's a 7-11 across the street where he would go to buy some gum or a slurpee or something, but he's just spent the last of his change on the school vending maching. It didn't even work. For all he knows, that candy is still suspended there, halfway between two nowhere choices.

He shuffles his feet a little bit, feeling the concrete hard against his calloused heels. His flip flops dangle uselessly from either hand, swinging as he walks. He could just walk forever, lost in the rhythm, each uniform footfall vibrating in his bones, tendons, ligaments, the skin stretched tight across his bug-bitten shins.

He watches the alien movements of his bare feet, wishing he could pause to inspect a molten half-chocolate black with swarming ants. He cranes his head in passing, but is unable to stop. After awhile, he can't tell if he is walking the sidewalk, of if it is carrying him along. It could be both.

The entire afternoon is this living, breathing thing, and he, the heart, is drumming it into existence.