Going Inkless

The street I live on branches off a larger artery across from an old industrial building where they work with giant concrete blocks. The place is nearly abandoned. You never see anyone working there. Only occasionally are there lights on or a truck parked nearby. I imagine that the property is an unprofitable piece of some larger construction empire, caught in an economic limbo between life as a viable working factory and value as someone's tax write-off. So while it waits for the balance to shift and make it valuable enough to tear down and build another dream, it has been our landmark for directing visitors to our street. "Keep on the main road until you see the big ugly thing on the left, then turn right." It's plenty ugly, too. Every morning as I go to work, I sit at the stop sign waiting to turn onto the main road, and our big ugly landmark just looms on the opposite side, staring back at me. Stark and cold, its face is the sort of sickly yellowed brown ...

This morning the sky was an upside-down ocean, hung with rolls and waves of foamy cloud, spitting drops of spray infrequently on my windshield. Though the surface of it was layered in dull shades of slate and blue, something glowed beneath the waves. At the stop sign, I held my breath, eyes on the waves above my world. It was the kind of sea that tempts you against your better judgement to take out the little rowboat and see where the storm might blow you. But in the end, I chose to go to work instead.