Fiction Friday!

Did I mention that my foot is going to fall off?
Anyway, I feel like Alliteration August is a perfectly fitting month in which to have an abundance of * Fiction Fridays. Let the fictioning** commence!
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There is a bloodstain on my leg. On the back of my right calf. I don't know whose blood it is. I don't know how it got there.

I don't know who I am. I don't know how I got here.

One could say that the same is true for most everything. That tree? I don't know who it is. I don't know how it got here. Same for the lamppost. Same for the flowers.

That's the kind of stuff, the pointless things, that get thought about on my morning walk. It's force of habit, that's all. I put on my shoes to go outside, and then these thoughts, they just appear in my head. The birds put them there, I'm sure of it. They escape from their cages at night and fly to me and drop little thoughts into my ears. The grass is growing up, entangling my feet while I'm just trying to stand here. Earth, I know that I've been mean to you, but please don't eat me up. Reject me! Reject me like the poison you know I am! Don't be like me, don't gravitate to the things that will kill you.

Or do. It's not my decision, it's yours. It's your life, it can be your death too. Do it the way you want to. Don't let me decide for you. Don't let nature decide what happens to you, Earth. It's time to grow up and be independent, just like I am.

But really, I don't want to be. You tear me away from other people and I'm cowering, shivering. I can't be alone, I can't be independent, I can't be anything. Why aren't you there for me when I need you? Why don't you care?

Sometimes the pavement turns into a set of stairs, straight out of nowhere. I stop there and stare all the way up, but I can never tell where they go. All I see is stairs. I walk around them, on the grass. You can't see them from the other side, you know. Can't see anything at all from the other side.

When I get to the other side, I hope I can see stuff. I don't know what I want to see, but there has to be something here worth looking back on. Resistance, maybe. Independence. Seeing a little bit of that once in a while wouldn't be half bad.

I sit down on the grass, between the sidewalk and the street. I lean back, so that my head is nearly in the road, wondering what will happen. The dew is wet, too wet, on my neck and hands and probably on my back too, only it hasn't soaked through my clothes quite yet. A car swerves to avoid me and I get up. My hair looks funny, I can feel it.

Maybe I just am funny, and maybe I'm not and maybe I can't fit into any of the cages.

The birds are fine with that.

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*Katherines? Anyone?
**Don't say what I know you're going to say. Yes, I am a fun person to play Scrabble with.