Little Steps To Heaven

1.

/unedited/ all criticism welcome

His name was Finn; Finberk Simmons, he was the next-door neighbor to my four siblings and I and everyday I saw him. Everyday, when I trudged outside of my home, on the earliest of mornings at seven in the morning, he was there. He always seemed to sit on those stairs, his apartment door astray and the light inside that lit the dark hallway, with a different bowl of cereal sat upon his knees. I didn't know why, I didn't know his reasoning on sitting on the cold stairs of our barely heated up apartment building, but he sat there, everyday and when I ascended down the stairs every morning, "Good morning." He would say.

And everyday, every morning, I responded back, "Morning!" A little hyper, a little more happy, and a little more...more. Finn was different, I thought, Finn was strange and in a weird sort of way, Finn intrigued me, made me want to know more about him.. I didn't know how he spent his days, if he ever left the stairwell, but when I walked those stairs up to our shared level, there he was, sitting on those stairs with another bowl of cereal, different, of course.

"Hello." He would greet me.

"Hi!" I would reply, again, in the same preppy, happy, excited, tone that I seemed to bare when I spoke to him. There was something about him.

It was around the end of my day, at five in the afternoon, when I was walking those stairs up home again, when I saw him sitting there, a bowl of cereal atop of his knees, and his usual attire; pajamas. Sometimes, for a brief moment, I wondered if he even got up.

And when he saw me walking those stairs up, "Hello." His greeting would be.

"Hi!"