Goodbye 2008 by Art Siegel
There’s a crack in the sidewalk.
No one who walks over it remembers where it started, but there it is, between their soles. Everyday it leans on itself a little more. It grates on itself until bit by bit it chips away at its own crooks and reaches out new dents into the concrete. It’s as much a part of the sidewalk as the footfalls, and one day someone will walk over the cracks and wonder if there was once sidewalk in the pebbles and sherd.
When the sun is hovering about ten feet above it with unbearable, wavering arms, then the downcast eyes of passersby are upon it. Then, it’s a splitting, fracturing trail. It’s a sweatless enervation and anyone who sees it is really only thinking about the shade and the coolness and the relief at its end.
There’s a little yellowing leaflet, there in that crack. Right there in the elbow of the third weariness from the center – it’s lying flat, and it looks downtrodden. It isn’t clear whether every footfall smashes it down, whether drought grinds its edges, whether solstice squeezes its life out of it. But it won’t give up.
The city may walk upon concrete paths, but all things crumble. This here is a little crack in perfection, and here the leaflets may grow.
Her Two Cents
To you, Missed Connections. Keep sprouting.
Wow. That’s lovely.
Thank you.