I spent my summer barefoot...

I spent my summer barefoot, sitting underneath cumulus clouds. Sitting with head tipped to the side, I clipped picture after picture out of retired National Geographic magazines. The faces of people from all over the world fell into the grass around me. Universal expressions of pain, concentration and uncorrupted innocence. Everywhere around me. But flat and bodiless.

I spun the rusted shears around my finger and imagined that I once knew these people, perhaps in another lifetime or one that hasn't happened yet. They're faces, familiar. From Nepal, from Argentina, from Ghana. A moon face, sunburns, folded skin. The entire world, littered around me and quietly staring.

And when I couldn't stand their eyes anymore I handpicked the loudest and saved them in a box of index cards. The rest I didn't bother with. The gaunt-cheeked elder might have blown away back to his village for all I know. The blue-eyed belle and the homeless man, what of them? What of the rest of them?

It's possible they just stayed in the grass there, disintegrating, becoming part of the earth again. I try not to think about ink seeping into the dirt or anything of the sort. I appreciate the art behind it. And maybe that's all that matters in the end. Person to picture to dust.

I put my cut up National Geographics in the second drawer of my desk. My shears, so blunt they hardly finish the job, go in a cup next to the box of black pens.