Rubber Soles

She walks on rubber soles, barely there feeding air to her cold toes
She beats the concrete sections of the ruining sidewalk
going somewhere not because she wants to -- because she
doesn't want to be alone again.
She doesn't want to feel.

She waits. Obeys the bright red hand that tells her not to go.
Twice she guesses her purpose with this forced pause
but a third guess changes to a bright white devil over her shoulder
urging her to plow through the cold slush covered asphalt.
She swallows fear.

She doesn't think about the ground she feels through worn socks
worn three days in a row wet from sweat and snow.
She doesn't wish for new shoes nor the good ol' days
when trips to friends' were made in the back seat of her mom's car.
She wants not to be alone.

So she crosses the street, despite having numb feet and broken soles
and the knowledge of the hurt she'll cause by a belly full of
something someone will give her. From something she smoked. Something
drank.
She's thinking about those days in a new school when no one knew her
name.
She won't know what it was.

She won't notice slipping away. She won't feel anything.