We crouch by the graffiti of the old ice-cream parlour wall waiting for the shadows of the old buildings and lampposts to melt into blackness. Once we can no longer tell their shape from the darkness of the cracking sidewalk we feel safe to move and get on with the business of survival. We have product to move, matches, soap, toilet paper, pain-killers. These things are in higher demand than crack. We take our payment in food and clothing, we are hard negotiators. We have to be. Cave in to the pleading eyes of a desperate mother and maybe we fail to get our next haul of goods from the mob, then what? We starve? The shadows tell us when our time is up, when it's time to retreat back to the shell of the parlour that is our territory. Even a ghostly outline of deeper grey in the monochromatic world of out nocturnal lives is enough to halt even a favourable negotiation. In a society with no overreaching rules the rules of your clan are absolute. You're in or you're out.
YOU ARE READING
Drowning Reflections
SpiritualThere is no up or down, no left or right. There is only the pull of currents that guides you, the steady tug of a flowing stream. All you have to decide is whether or not you would follow~
