witness

I walked home. Following the telephone lines through the neighborhood, my weak ankles threatend to give in to the occassional crack splitting the cement path beneath me. This must be what it feels like to learn how to walk; though, I have been walking, without interruption, for 28 years give or take. I have no recollection of my first breath, let alone my first step. Such important moments in one's life and yet there is no memory. Is it important or just a thing that happens, like how we see the sun set and rise? We inhale, we cry, we open our eyes, we crawl and eventually we learn to walk. It is just the ordinary progression of things. Important only because someone or something else is a witness to our birth and if we're lucky, our death. Walking now, I don't know where to rest my gaze. My eyes follow the base of a tree from roots to the weighted ends of leafy branches. I reach up to touch a leaf with the tip of my finger. A small gesture, a quiet hello. There is so much to see, too much, I think. At my feet, an earth worm wriggles its body across the vast expanse of sidewalk, a calm but scorching sea. Picking up a small twig I gently nudge the worm until it is curled around the end hitching a ride a few inches to the dark soil green grass paradise that is my neighbors lawn. "I am your witness," I think to myself. "Will you be mine?"