i am badass

you can make a picture in your head: think of a dirty plastic bag let loose from the roof of the Empire State Building and miraculously wending its way up and down the currents of polluted hot air that grace this fair city, slowly, eventually, finally, totally descending to the earth-ly realm.

i drift down, crackling plastic bag body rattling, past the condos and nervous fat free bony women in ann taylor separates that hang loosely around their gaunt waists, pacing around desks piled high with thick smelly perfumed copies of Vogue and maybe Mirabella, to cover up the divorce papers. over loud loud crowded streets full of gypsy cabs that vibrate meringue bass back and forth like a pinball machine and young peachish girls in tube tops sucking lollipops. pirouhetting my plastic handles and not quite but almost touching the catholic high school playgrounds on rooftops surrounded by supertall fences that are badly disguised suicide dares.

all is slow and grace and effortless until the abrupt and shocking stop! my plastic bag legs caught in the branches of a scrawny tree. and i see the hundreds of other plastic bags snared by trees around me. that's why they plant trees in this part of town: to harvest the fruits of the earth here. like salmon eggs. plastic bag caviar.

in the evenings some unnamed trucks go by and pick them quickly but efficiently, staffed by short, round men in orange overalls and lime green ski masks. they have these long sticks with rubber hands on the ends that grab the bags with a ducky sound that reminds me of my sweaty legs lifting off a vinyl car seat on a humid day. and then the bags are quickly inhaled into the darkness behind the van door, and if they scream you can't hear it, and who knows what they do?

i drifted down by the river (laughing at the imprisoned bags that shrieked for release), and found someone's abandoned pink and blue hopscoth game. it got a little out of control and the insides of the squares spilled out and exploded, chalk-esque, into smeary bursts of color and life along the walkway.

i rubbed the lines indistinct, except for, in baby blue cursive chalky handwriting:

which i spared...
(since i am!)