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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3543 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention I Am Watching The Way People Walk T. E. Ballard How they teeter on their toes as if falling into the room, prepared for failure and others who do not stumble or waver but blindly accept the floor, their friend to greet them with a step. And I wonder how I came to my father in the mustard house, the house I was never allowed to call orange. Did my vision between worlds rock back and forth, deciding to trust? Return then to the small steps to the creatures who have been cursed with legs and movement. Return to the place where a man waits, arms open like wings to the child, who simply moves her feet. Nineteen bones sleep in the foot, a small world which bears no evidence of travel. The Chitock people bury their dead in the floor. I’ve seen an infant laid out on a sheet of paper, her wrists circled by blue beads, her skeleton studied for clues of her culture, for evidence that would explain death or desire to bury the dead so close to the living. I’ve seen the last breath of a baby no bigger than a sparrow the egg of his head wrapped blue by the cord of his mother. Today I am watching the way people walk as if they are falling and the steps they are taking to reach for the other. |
