The Color of Pomegranate Seeds on the Border

A young man rocked back and forth in a pile of plastic rubble, striving to build sense from what stayed. The smell of fake cinnamon and sugar surrounded him, a hint of warm vanilla drifting loftily. Instead of pyramid or skyscraper dreams, he recalls a chocolate hovel on the border of Georgia and Alabama. A fallen bicycle abandoned to stand and fall on its own in the dusty drive, next to Converse All Stars and a rusted desk. Chalked on worm riddled wood, the equation 9+18+22= scrawls, the answer never found. A purple basket with a black-eyed baby, clothed in a sky blue onesie stood in the dirt, neglected and overturned, a black widow stitching her webs into the soft folds. As in childhood games they imagined, Godzilla finally arrived to smother them. The sound of silence stained his world pomegranate-seed red, like a failed dye, attempting to color them caramel gold. All that remained was infinities jest laughing at him in the form of thirteen crows.