Halfway
home, and despite his t-shirt and shorts, Skunk collapsed in a sweaty funk on a
bench overlooking the city.
The
morning walk to work and the ensuing work itself raised his ankle permanently
into consciousness, the actual manifest limp become more pronounced across the
day. He imagined the bones inside slowly melting, softening against each other
and in time unable to coalesce for his support.
The
plastic suck of the carrier bag between his feet relinquished a box bashed at
all eight corners, its lid’s driven horses and batwing logo conferring upon him
their familiar grace and inside, enfolded by tissue itself branded with the
same two-horse motif, the boots’ brown leather still exhibited the dust
testament to their forsaken shelf longevity.
Mother: Go on,
A
cloud moved off the sun, trains left the station either way, and the eyelets
now shone bright in his hand. Pulling each onto his feet, he tightened the
crisscross laces and felt his ankle in the reassuring grip of their tough brown
wrap, walking the erstwhile pumps to a nearby wastebin’s burnt yellow plastic
frozen in melted mid-drip.
Mother: go bouncing.
The
white fabric tab at either heel, his every step on up the hill home broke these
new boots to him, engendering comfort and security from an awareness that for
the moment some ineluctable definite had been postponed; far away his mother
was being propped up in bed for her lunchtime feeding.
