I was down. I was kicked to the curb.

The curb of a road less traveled, where gutters reigned and puddles oversaw the world above and below. The curb of a street in a town– a town of beating drums and throbbing strings. A town where a small band played in the plaza, searching for meager tips of coins and bills in the velvet lining of their overturned top hats. I sat on the wet corner with my feet drowned in the water of a different world, an other-worldly pearl.

I was down on that curb and I was looking. Looking for an answer, searching for relief. I looked in the reflection of the sky but all I saw where metaphoric birds fly by. When I couldn’t find it, I laid back and waited. Waited for it to pass. Pass like the cars on that lonely street. Pass like those passengers in their comfy seats. Pass like the words flying through my head– like the moon jumping above my bed. In my random corner I saw those cars fly by, fly by with drivers waving– kissing goodbye.

And why to me? They knew of me not– but somehow I felt we were great acquaintances of friend and thought. They were fragments of time– shards of my memory. Flashes and grains of time and space.

And suddenly– a great symphony fell upon the air– fell upon me, fell upon the trees, swept me off of my street-side chair. I heard it all around my ears, I felt a hope that it could sweep away all the fears. But soon, alas, only a mirage on the skyscraper of emotion– a mere oar turning the ocean.

And I cried. For a distant hope that I called out to did not respond as my inspiration in the heavenly music tumbled viciously and hit the ground. I kicked a gleaming lamppost– my sidewalk sentry. I disregarded it with al my frustration– all my feelings and doubts.

I cried those tears that flowed like thoughts- thoughts of dreams and broken fires- dreams of thoughts and dousing pyres.

In those salty drops that fell, little worlds of prayers and lives that only of God could tell. I saw through them, through the liquid bubbles– through philosophy and onward more- to a dark and distant door.