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Broken Limbs by
John Thompson,
Sr.
Stephen Kyriacou Jr.
The Burden of A Promise
A
pair of sneakers tied together at their
knotted shoestrings, they hang on power lines high above suburban
streets, cast
towards the clouds by boys, just home from trips to the mall with their
mothers, complete, now, with a brand new pair. And like that, the ones
they
wore for months so long, they are forgotten, poised and dangling from
their own
personal gallows, empty of the feet that gave them meaning like men
empty of
the souls that make them men. They’re strung up to face every harsh
sunrise,
every bleak sunset, each sneaker, with only their constituent, so
similar and
yet so different, such opposites -- the left and the right. And every
rain that
comes soaks them full, leaves them heavier, strains the load on the
laces.
Every snow, every ice, it makes them shake. And with every wind that
blows,
every wave of air that breaks across the sky, a potential savior in
every gust,
there comes the fleeting hope of deliverance from that lofty Hell,
posed at
the bottom brink of Heaven. And with every wind, when it subsides, when
a calm settles in, they find themselves not on the asphalt, but
swinging, laces
twisted, damned to spin.
You drive down this street and you see them all. You don’t see any on
the lines that run parallel to the street, where so many cables are strung. No,
you see them all on the single phone and power lines that cut across the
avenues perpendicularly, connecting the poles on opposing sides.
There’s one of those power lines right by where
my house is, and every time I pull into my driveway, I have come underneath
those sneakers dangling off of it. I’ve tried to get them down myself, always
to no avail. Those things that you use to cut down tree branches, the long pole
with the little saw on top, that doesn’t quite reach. I can’t really put a
ladder on the street to give me those extra few feet I’d need, either, because
there’s such a big hill right in front of my property. I don’t think it would stand
up straight, not without maybe two people bracing it. And I live alone.
I called the electric company once to see if they
could take the sneakers down, the one pair that hung on this one
particular
power line, closest to my property. The woman just laughed at me and
asked why
they had to come down. I told her that they were unsightly and
annoying. She
laughed at that, too. I told her that they posed a safety risk by
putting
weight on the wire. She said that, no, they didn’t. Those were my two
big
selling points. So when she shot them down, I just let it go at
that.
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