Puddled Sky by Brandon McNeice
Overnight the storm walked the block, rinsing hopscotch squares into a watercolor map. Pink into blue, into sun-faded yellow. Numbers swollen and blurred at the edges. The curb smells like iron. Earthworms climb the seams between slabs. In shallow puddles, rowhouses stand on their heads; the sky puddled underfoot. A bottle cap sleeps in the square marked three, the old marker.
A sneaker writes wet parentheses across the board. A bike tire stitches the eight and nine. Someone, coming home late or leaving early, carries a crescent of color to the next house, then the next. Chalk dust doesn’t disappear; it travels. A sparrow bathes where the ten would be, throwing water like confetti. A door thuds; rings spread across a puddle and vanish. I steady myself, and a faint smudge lifts to my palm.
By noon, the concrete will dry. The squares return in pale outline, a set of rules remembering themselves: home, one foot, two feet, don’t step on the lines. Children look down, then jump where the shapes used to be. Soles blot water, leaving quick half-moons that fade as fast as they appear. Arms lift for balance; a pebble clicks ahead like a metronome. They follow the ghost grid.
Brandon McNeice is a Philadelphia-based writer of fiction, poetry, and essays. His work appears or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Flash Frog, Plough, Front Porch Republic, and The Philadelphia Citizen. He also writes McNotes, a weekly newsletter on education, leadership, and life.
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