Decisions Below

Cold vermouth. As dry as a perfect lie puckering your lips. Dirty martinis in tall glasses culled of darkness. And the time spent with it. As neither disciple nor servant. Only a peer. The longest fingernails I've ever grown still don't reach passed the skin. Everything is recessed. Weighted. Balanced against something bigger. Keeping the sting at only a pinch. The impression residual at best.

Dirty socks manifesting sculpture from the seams in the floor. Moaning brightly from their corners about the places we have walked. Every pebble we crushed. Every grain of sand displaced. All those things I've forgotten remembering her.

Little girls in shabby flannel and knotted hair hoping the world wouldn't notice they were there.

There were doctors to tell me I was wrong. And others to tell me how to be right. There were doors with reinforced glass. And windows that couldn't be opened.

Confiscated shoe laces. And tiny drawers in which I hid my thoughts.

Still everything was different then. And the child I was only a stepping stone. Broken blades of grass underfoot as I stomped my way to where I am now.

Bigger drawers. Different clothes. Same windows.