Close to the Ground
an excerpt

Our cities were drowning. My breath leaked out from in between my lips when curled into an amused smirk. I had just spent the last hour trying to create shapes with my breath like I had seen the old men doing with their cigarettes on countless street corners before I decided to park myself on this particular one. Under this particular awning. Back then I would have probably told you that I just didn't feel like walking any further. That my knees were creaking in the cold, my chest had gone lax from the relaxation of heavy thinking, and my feet moved only in anticipation of rest. Now I would tell you I was meant to be there at such particular moment so that a chain of high demanding events could begin their course. But then that would imply that it started with me, wouldn't it?

The wind howled through the buildings and side street alleys. She screamed at what we had become, ripping at our coats and hair. I didn't care much for the Elements. Some say they were once people so enraged by the injustice of the world that they became too great for their own bodies and were now nothing but obstacles for us to overcome, others say they were created as a form of continual punishment and a reminder to the fall of humanity. And still some say they were only trying to help us get back on our proper course. Granted I'd never actually spoken with an Element, I'd yet to meet one that was anything other than a menace to me or my family.

I was alone now, but I occasionally thought back on what I knew of my parents. My mother was kind and patient and wore a lot of hats and my father was stubborn and crass and had a dry sense of humor. I remember them laughing together by the street fire despite having just lost our home to East Gate for the third time. I remember these snippets about them that I can't piece together and make whole. My mother's favorite color was yellow. My father's favorite music was jazz. My mother's favorite food was fresh strawberries, of which I'd never even had, as they were indigenous to her neighborhood as a child and not to mine. My father's shoe size was thirteen. Though I have all these details somewhere in my memory, if you asked me, I would tell you honestly I can't even remember what they looked like.

My friends, as most young adults, were either dead or missing. I sat on a random street corner, watching some other kids break into the house across the alley, trying miserably, and failing, to make shapes with my breath. I hated today. Without knowing what yesterday had been, I sat wishing today away, starving for a past I had never even tasted. Were my hands as wrinkled as they felt?