The granite curb is a cliff, blinking in the colors of a downtown night after a rain. My left hand grips my scratched metal cane. My right arm is tensed to fend off a fall. Each placement of the rubber tip on the oily concrete sidewalk allows me to shuffle my feet forward, bringing me closer to the edge. I begin to tremble as I stop to look down at the bottom of the canyon—a paved gutter covered with a matted mush of leaves and trash. A puzzle begins to play out in my head and, after sorting through strategies, I see the solution: I poke my cane down onto the valley floor, swipe it back and forth through the detritus to grip onto hard ground, lean into it for support, stabilize in mid-air like a high diver just before the plunge, reach out to the dirty black Mustang parked to my right, implant my hand on its trunk just above its grimy taillight lens; stabilize; lift my cane off the ground without initiating a free fall, tuck the cane under my right armpit and squeeze it there, reach out with my left hand to the shiny crimson hood of the Hyundai Elantra parked to my left; stabilize; catch my breath, step down into the canyon with my Nike-clad left foot, carefully avoiding snagging it on the ragged edge of the cliff; stabilize; guide my right sneaker to follow the other onto the low world; stabilize; recalibrate, transfer my cane back into my left hand; stabilize; remove my right hand from the Mustang’s sooty trunk at the moment it spins away from the curb in a puff, carrying my handprint and breath to another place.
mgeisser
