Where I'm From

The cement floors chilled m toes as I would pad across the infinite room heading as quickly, clumsily as I could to my electric blue Little Tykes swing my daddy had hung from the rafters, a million years above my head. One lopsided hop and I could sit at my throne overlooking the only glass wall suspended before me. With my legs pumping and arms pulling ages before muscle tone would set in, I could adjust the frame on my view of where I am from.

Trees would beg for water but not know which direction to look, branches squinting in the head of the LA sun they would be suffocated by smoggy air and cigarette smoke from woman stealing away the last breath of light in the tree's shade. The woman would smile at no one looking and say, "At least I got here, at least I came."

Her view eye-level at a storefront window would never glimmer in the light or shine in the never-coming rain. Not in her eyes, nor in mine, from up above on my throne, no matter how low i would adjust my shutter speed or how much artificial white light I could spit from my pre-pubescent mind.

"Bienvenido," a dim sign read, its hard manmade material standing strongly before both of our eyes. Manmade, she would remind herself as her dry hands materialized around the plastic rosary that clung to her chest.

With just an inking of something and a dash of pain, she would gaze up past the scrawling branches through their cries, and her eyes would meet mine through the shiny glass window a million years above her head.

This is where I'm from.