If Shoes Could Talk -

Mario walked the streets of his childhood. Nothing had changed, not even the shoes that hung from the telephone cables and power lines. There were at least thirty pairs all along the the street Mario walked down. The small, broken houses looked the same as they did twenty years ago. Even the people appeared the same. Living day to day on two or three minimum wage part-time jobs. Hispanic, African-American, and White alike.

He passed the house that was still the stronghold for the street gang that ruled Highland Avenue since he was a boy. Glancing over to the four men that sat on the porch with handguns tucked in this pants. They watched him with suspicion, but didn’t bother to tell him anything. One bobbed his head at him as if to say hi. Mario just nodded back once and walked a little quicker. He knew them from growing up on the same street with them, but they had gone separate ways when they reached teenhood. Mario wanted to get out of there, so he worked hard, went to college, and was now a English professor at UCLA. Those guys were drug dealers.

Mario stopped at the house his grandmother owned and raised him in. It was rundown and empty. No one had lived there since Mama Lola died. It was a sad sight. Not only did she raise Mario, but she took in anyone who wanted to get away from the gang. Her house was like sacred ground in that neighborhood.

He looked up to see the pair of high-tops he had thrown up to the phone wire when he graduated high school. A mix of grief and pride filled him. Those shoes had been the only pair he had in high school. They had been through all his girlfriends, all his beatens he got from the gang who wanted him to join, all the walking he did to and from school. That fabric and rubber were witnesses to what the ghetto really was. If they could talk, they would tell the most heartbreaking stories, but they would also tell stories of survival and living life to the fullest.

#write20for31 #flashfiction #penuary2018