Flash Fiction! THE CRACK IN THE SIDEWALK!

THE CRACK IN THE SIDEWALK

Cracking, splitting, and dying to expand is the crack in the sidewalk. We walk on it, around it, and hop over it, not knowing what the crack means. The crack in the sidewalk has a purpose so Sweet-thang thought. She walked over that same crack everyday and every night. It was summer 1965 in the hot south. Sweet-thang was walking the streets only for a purpose not known to her. In her world and in her town, Macon GA, there wasn’t much else to do but walk the streets. Chocolate, curvy and an afro that was Sweet-Thang. Men whistled and stared but Sweet-thang had better thangs to do. When she walked she looked down and always wondered why the sidewalk cracked and didn’t go back. It was hot as fire in Macon GA, which to most southerners was a bit southern town. She dreamed of being bigger than life, but that’s as far as it went. Sweet-thang always had her eye on the crack in the sidewalk because she knew that she was that crack. Broken, black, beaten down from the prejudice south. All the experiences she had encountered with blacks hating her because she’s dark to white folks spitting at her because she was a negro. Sweet-thang felt that she and the crack in the sidewalk had everything in common. Getting walked on, stomped on, and ran over was what she felt in her soul. Sweet-thang got inspired by the crack in the sidewalk. She wrote a piece about it:

I have noticed the crack in the sidewalk. As I journey on it, near it and far from it, it propels me to keep it moving. The sidewalk and I are not much different as I am broken in many ways. My heart is cracked down the middle, sideways and just broke. I thought no one or nothing was quite like me. Now I see the crack in the sidewalk as I see myself. I can finally pick up the pieces and see the beauty in myself as I see the beauty in the crack in the sidewalk. The sidewalk, cracked, peeled, broken, and ripped down the middle. There’s such beauty in the cracked sidewalk. The journey I have taken going and coming on that sidewalk is a journey I have learned to see for what it truly is. The cracks, the bits of falling pieces peeling off and ever expanding concrete is what I see in myself. I am those bits of falling pieces and the splitting crack down the middle. I know now why I journeyed on that sidewalk each and everyday. No matter what happens in life you can always put those pieces back together.

*I am Sweet-Thang and this is my piece*