Memoirs of a Downtown kid.

Memoirs of a Downtown kid. 

By Myranda Neizer.
I love nothing more than the cool breeze that touches my sweaty body late at night when the windows are open and the door is left to swing open and closed at its own accord. It’s worth every mosquito bite in the morning.
    The sound of horse hooves can be heard echoing through the darkness, bouncing off of the pools of light that fill up the street like puddles of rain. The horses pull buggies filled with pointing fingers and smiling faces.
Point, point, point, the tourist with grins plastered on their faces point out everything around me. The cobble stone streets and shaded porches, the stucco walls. They point and stare at things I’ve always known, things that I’ve always loved. Sometimes they even point at me. “Mommy, where is that girls shoes?”
    “Twang, twang, twang,” Greasy men strum their instruments with their palms out and hats poised to catch any loose change tossed their way.
    Teenagers who appear as old as dirt, smell of musk and sweat, lurk in the allies. These are my people. Dread locked hippies clad in rags, dizzy in their cloud of smoke and breathe. You see them flying their signs and you wonder how high they’ll go. How far have they come? Have they ever slept on the rail road, backs flush against cold planks and sharp gravel? Their eyes cast up wards searching for a star that they can swallow like a pill. Their bare feet walk for hours just to inhale misty morning salt from oceans that lay as flat and still as mirrors. The blackened bottoms of their feet are like road maps, as if the asphalt seeped into them, staining their souls. Who ever said eyes are the windows to the soul has never seen a travelers feet. Has never read the journey caked and scraped into their heels. The condition of your feet is the window to your soul.
    I love these people. The ones whose skirts hang down to their ankles, stained brown with muddy scum from the street they sleep on. The people who have cleansed themselves down to the bare bone of things. Who have stripped away the flesh of society and live right next to the pearly white bones that most people are not aware of. I love the people who do not bother with sinking their teeth into the fat offered on the outside. The people who know that all the strength comes from the marrow, that sweet nectar that can only be found after you crack the hard surface and get a few splinters in your gums. Or between your toes.