tar

it sticks to your shoes like melted asphalt, leaving a permanent spot of black on your soul. A spot that sticks, but doesn't spread like the blood on your shoe, across your hands, vindication accomplished. vengeance, maybe you should have tried calling 911, but what about your soul, where would it be then, would it still have that inexorable blackness, hiding beneath that beautiful smile forever, nobody knows, but now you are someone that killed someone. Guilty would wonder if they know, you feel like they can see through you. But you don't feel bad at all, the feeling passes, you laugh expelling the tar, bits of darkness flaking off your shoes, leaving them on the street, laces stretched across the telephone wires, a warning to those who would come next, bloody shoes. you move off, jump the fence and are back at the beginning of the night, a day away. You can't escape the spots, they burn away leaving you with a love for stripes.

Moral of this story, vigilante stripes.

Leah