Loss
I wonder who wears the shoes of greatness. I mean, they must still be around. They are shoes after all. It's not as if they just vanish. They must still be around. Shoes don't just go away. They just get resouled and resold from time to time. It really seems as if no one is wearring them now, as inconceivable as that seems. Maybe they've all been bought up and bronzed by collectors. Maybe they are just sitting in the back of the closets of their owners in disuse. It's a sad day indeed when people will own the shoes of greatness and not wear them. Perhaps they're hanging over power lines.
A rose shatters in slow motion.
A fire crackles merrily. It is glad that as best it could tell it has no resemblence to a funeral pyre. Personally, I draw happiness from precisely the same source. Smoke rises from the fire entirely of it's own will. It is rather uninterested in whether or not its source relates at all to human death. Its chosen direction is up. Some would read this as indicating happiness or hope uplifting. The smoke would not laugh at this idea because smoke doesn't do that sort of thing, but it would also not agree with it. Smoke went up because it wanted to and it wanted to because it did. Wind did not remove the smoke's choice of direction but was apt to strongly modify it.
The man and the woman coughed heavily as the smoke blew directly into their faces. When it passed they felt a chill in the air which they were unsure whether or not had been there before. He clasped her tighter to himself underneath their shared blanket. Two weeks later she will leave him. Her regrets will be few, and that is not a good thing in this case. He will cry for two weeks afterward. Like an innocent man in prison, he did not deserve her.
The last two sentences of the previous paragraph may or may not be true. I seem to have temporarily lost my natural narrator's omniscience so I had to make those two up. It sounds right anyway.
Two eyes blinked, peering down through the grate. The eyes on Thomas Jefferson did not blink back, although they stared upwards. Something akin to half a tear formed in the left eye above the grate. He had computed the value of the yo-yo with tax to the cent. His spending had been carefully regulated to allow for the yo-yo. His nickel was staring up at him emotionlessly. Until the memory that they had been out of cookies in the cafeteria today at lunch came to him, he thought that he would not be able to afford it. His mother would never know whether the dime went toward the cookie or not. She would also not have cared, but he did not know that.
"I want my socks back from the dryer. It's bad enough the cost of laundry tokens for the machines. When you add in the one sock per every two load tithe, it becomes intolerable. I am seriously considering lodging a formal protest with whomever is responsible."
"I think that that would be the people who make dryers."
"Quite possibly."
"May the Maytag repairman fear your wrath."
"Indeed!"
A leaf fell from a tree. It glided gently back and forth in its fall, letting the air and wind guide it. It landed in a slow spot on the surface of a little creek. It drifted down stream leisurely until it came to the little rapids near the big rocks which it slipped furiously down. And it was gone.
"Ack. Bleh! Damn spider web."
The wind failed to serve as the sufficient distraction he had hoped it would. Rather it seemed to be as it is physically, moving lighter matters along and moving the heavy things unmoved.
He had been able to see it in his grandmother's eyes. She knew she was going to die soon. At least he had been able to tell her that he loved her, and that was something. She was gone now. Life, as long as it may be, has a tendency to prefer quick endings.
From the top of the hill he could see almost the whole town. His grandmother's house was obscured by a large building, but he could tell where it was. The wind up here was always strong and he loved it. It blew like it knew where it was going. It blew like a waterfall falls. But today it would not distract. It would not ease the pain.
He sat there for at least two hours wondering, contemplating, feeling, losing, mourning, crying. Then the sun began to set and he knew he had to head home. He headed down the hill towards home as the sun set in the distance, stealing away the day which had seen a grandmother lose her life and a grandson his immortality.