It kind of feels like...

"I want you to know," he thinks to himself, "I wanted to say these things but just...". The line on the other end of the receiver clicks. The cell phone is flipped shut and shuffled away into a pocket somewhere. The idea is that if you reach the ultimate low, if you ultimately don't care about yourself at all, someone will come along who cares about you more than you do.

The phone vibrates in his pocket, he's had enough of that particular emotion tonight. He sits down on the curb, the street hot and dirty. There's nowhere to hide from the heat, so you might as well try to enjoy it. The only relief you get from the sun is when darkness fills the world, when night falls on the city. Even with the sun hiding on the other side of the earth there's still not much change. A couple degrees here or there but you have to be thankful for something. Looking down at his shoes and the scars left on the asphalt by someone else, someone sitting exactly in this spot. Someone who was no doubt, going through something at least similar.

The sun heats the tar filling the cracks; unknowingly he's put his shoe into the middle of this mess. The shoe comes out but but it takes some forcing. When his foot finally does lift there's an exact imprint of the sole of his shoe left in the melted tar. He knows it won't last, but the idea that he's left his mark, even if it as something as small as this is the something positive he needs to just keep breathing. He wonders if this is a metaphor for the human condition. Everyone leaving temporary footprints in everyone else's tar. Staying just long enough to be noticed before the heat of the sun returns everything to how it was before you put your foot there.