Her

The snowflakes are falling, covering the cracks in the walkway. My boots are leaving trails behind me, no matter how far I to pick my feet up. There’s not a noise tarnishing the silence of the night. No headlights peering through the darkness. Just a street lamp here and there, the ones that work that is.

The cold has turned my cheeks scarlet, long since froze my nostrils. Walking the 2.7 miles home from work doesn’t seem that far, on an august night with the breeze blowing my billowy kitchen shirt away from my body. Atleast the winter doesn’t allow me to smell all the food that has clung to my body throughout the day. Instead, I don’t think I have fingertips or toes anymore.

Keeping my head to the ground. Trying to focus on where I’m headed, instead of where I’ve been. The warmth of the little space I call mine. Entering to see the enormous brown eyes, the ones that have been waiting for me long before the sun began to set. She lights my life up in ways that I never knew were possible, and she is the reason I’ve truly changed.

I’m watching my feet move, one in front of the other, over and over. Redundant is far from an understatement, but as the sidewalk changes under my feet I know I am almost home to her. The toe of my boot hits something. It’s not hard like a stone covered in snow, yet not soft like the crumpled waste that fills these streets. As I glance down to my right foot, peering out is a little black book. I stop for just a moment, long enough to get to a squat and uncover the rest of the mystery. In golden scrawled penmanship I see written “for you”. I don’t think a moment longer, not even to brush the snow off of the cover, only long enough to throw it in my bag.

Finally I am home. I squeeze the precious little girl I’ve been waiting to see for 10 hours, yet all I cannot help but wonder what is really inside of my green shoulder bag. I tuck her into bed, sing the song she’s heard every night since she came to me, “you are my sunshine, my only sunshine”. Feeling like I was going to burst at every and any seam, I run to my room, shutting the door ever so quietly. Sitting on the edge of my hideous mattress, I open the little black leather book. Popping open the little strap that had sealed it shut, trembling, it falls to the floor with a crack. I hold my breath for a moment, waiting to hear her. Instead, my eyes glance to the ground once again, and all I see strewn across my carpet, the faces of Benjamin Franklin looking back at me.

Thinking back to the silence walking home, I walk into her room, crawl into her far too small bed that creaks under my weight. I hold her tight, listening to her breath, feeling my boots on my feet, we fall asleep.