I walked home with a bat on one shoulder and a bag of shoes on the other. There was a tiny dinner scene in my pocket but I crushed it when I bent down to pick up an acorn. The bat told me I still had a shot. I replaced the dinner scene with the acorn. I thought of which records I would break first. I dropped the shoes and took 57 swings in a row. When I was done I tipped my cap and said, “It was an honor Mr. DiMaggio.” I imagined him giving me the finger. “Fuck you Joe,” I said. I took the acorn out of my pocket, tossed it up, and hit a perfect line drive over second base.
The shoes did not like each other. I tried to remember the dinner scene and all I could remember was a small child giving me a peace sign in front of a plate of Spanish tapas. I picked up the shoes and put them back in the bag. Most were jealous they didn’t get to play in the Sunday basketball game. The tapas had actually been crepes. A pair of loafers missed the days when I would casually shoot hoops and sky hook shots over the backboard.
A pen stuck out of my back pocket. A silver chain made up of little perfect rounded pebbles, hung down and brushed the back of my leg.
Somewhere in the world there is a crosswalk with seventeen white lines. I stepped on each of them. I imagined they were boards on a bridge suspended a thousand feet above a river of lava. I felt like an action adventure hero. I looked around, but there are no movie cameras. I continue walking home.
A block or two later I came to another crosswalk. A red hand told me to wait. I thought of cowboy and Indian movies. There were a few passing automobiles. A green dot told them when to go. A couple stopped behind me. I wanted to ask them if they had tapas or crepes for dinner. “It was terrible,” said the women, “My father didn’t understand.” I didn’t know what her dad didn’t understand. The guy nodded. He probably didn’t know either. I thought of terrible things. I thought of vomiting green omelets into a bag of sneakers. The crossing signal changed. The couple crossed. I looked at the crosswalk. It was faded. The lava had overtaken the bridge. I shrugged, put down my bag of shoes, and took some dry swings.
Krammer Abrahams, funny, has published in journals like elimae, Lamination Colony, Action Yes and many more. As editor of the long running Twitter journal HeyShortyComeToMyKegPartyDougIsInABadMoodThereAreNachosRINGRINGRINGRINGRINGRINGRINGBANANAPHONE
[…], he is a pioneer of online publishing. He didn’t blog and then he did.
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