Someone's Son

He is a snarl of metal pierced flesh and ink, a hieroglyphic life story, each body part a chapter added, still adding. Atop a bag he sits, back to the columns guarding the door to the big box book store, arms on knees and head bowed to the sun of the Indian Summer.

Through the doors, aisles of ideas and thoughts wait for one to take and eat, collecting dust. Fiction is the real winner and relevant life stories of the rich and famous, names familiar along the best sellers. Every once in a while a new name joins the ranks for longer than a week.

Coffee cups guide people by the hand round and round, periodically talking seats on shelves as they thumb through or sit reading magazines they have no intention of buying, but gleaning enough to talk intelligent in office conversations or at lunch. A pair of hands bridge the gap across a table, eyes sending instant messages encoded/decoded by cardiac code breakers.

Music subtly sets the mood, pace, tone, a soundtrack. Children run down the center to their section, train station, story time. They color pages in bright colored crayon to post on the faux tree wall.

[Rewind] He sits outside the doors, his empty hands, palm raised to the sun. An idea once, now shelved, name etched on his spine waiting for fingers to grace, blow the dust off and decide he's worth reading.

One car passes and then another.


written for Imperfect Prose