Concrete and Clay

A normal walk home. But I fret. People bang into the street and my shoulder. Earlier, a splinter fell into my finger. Glassundernailpain all day. Somehow comforting. Pins me to the pavement and the day. Maybe it’s endorphins which make me think this. White floating churches and scaffoldinged markets hem the pavement. This song is sad. I reach to shuffle. Dusk gathers. The smell of bonfires early in the air. From nowhere, mud covers the stone pavement. I notice a squat man in front of me wearing a cloak and a top hat. He clicks along a suddenly deserted pavement with heavy wooden shoes. From his side swings a brass clock on a fob - a censer sensing time. In the street stand a horse and cart, a lantern swaying over the nag's mane. Across the darkened street, partially hidden by the horse and suffused by the glow of a gas lantern stand a group of women wearing bonnets and hooped dresses. My air force ones are brown with mud. I panic confused and start to sweat as the present disappears. Turning the corner and nearly slipping to the floor, a brilliant white light blinds me, bleaching the floor and my eyes; a tear in the fabric of time. As in the beginning, the word brings me back, "Get that facker off the set!"