sTmykal

Dirt caked. A rough powder under rubber and canvas - the daily chore of dressing. The one pair of shoes. The one pair of jeans and sometimes a shirt.

Work? Is there any? The tires of the blue Dodge sag under the weight of refuse. Garbage. Tools. Trade. Your ... livelyhood. When did it last move?

Plastic. Cheap, flexible and stressed - but yours. Planted daily, the plastic grows. It spawns. It devours until there is only dirt. Caked. Rotting.

The street is both entertainment and social circle. You yell. You guffaw. You carry your voice to places that it should never go. Your cadence reverberates for all. From three feet away, you yell.

Constant.

From where you sit, in your yard, in your plastic dirt. You and your kin. Your family. Your jackanapes in grime. From where they sit, they yell. They howl. They slaver in chorus, in mimicry, following their leader. In dirt.

Is that your dream? Is that what you look forward to? To come home, to wallow, to waste away in the yard. Yelling. Surrounded by rust. Degraded by plastic. Running stupidly down the street at night, choked on the alcohol that surely sits in the cooler that now has roots. In the dirt.