Fleeting Royal Soles

Streetlights’ orange glow
against smaller other-color lights
-- the buzzing background
fluorescent gym light,

glowing bright blue tops
of emergency call buttons--
they overlap against my feet;
absurdly bare on sidewalk.

I wonder about sidewalk's
accidental mosaics
and compare them
to my instep pores.

I sit on the bush's bulwark
facing the few trees who
gifted me ever-misplaced
and fallen honey locust,

fallen into the cracks, the split
of sidewalk, this one to the next;
I dig fingernails against cement
to pull each yellow leaf individually

placing temporal halos around my arches
and crowning the tips of my toes.

Artwork courtesy of the author.