Olive Woods

Last updated on April 21, 2010

In the olive woods, a boy with black hair shuffles back and forth. The tips of his sneakers skim the dirt and the debris from the trees. The same dirt and debris brown his knees as they chafe on sharp pebbles, but he doesn’t notice. The construction of a squirrel-sized shanty has his attention in a clamp. It is what matters then and, surely, is as rewarding as anything good could be. He shuffles from the pile with supplies–moss, twigs, yarn–to the shanty, partly built. He works at a quicker pace, shuffles sporadically, gashing his knees now.

When he realizes how ghostly blue the world has gotten, he will run home between the trees where his mother will reprove him for being late, for bloodying his knees.