Shel Silverstein Sidewalk Ends: Poems Novels & Stories

December in Clinton Hill is quiet. Small lights glow in the trees along the street. The sky turns dark at four thirty. The neighborhood shifts from work to home life. I walk two blocks from the subway to my apartment. I know every crack in the sidewalk. I know the bodega with the broken sign. This street belongs to me.

POV: Silver Preston The night air tastes like rebellion. I breathe it in sharp and cold, and for a moment it is the only thing that feels real. Everything else - the dining hall conversation, Eli's face in the lamplight, the weight of unfinished sentences - blurs at the edges while this crystalline cold cuts straight through. I have been walking for twenty minutes without a destination, which has become my signature move this semester. I am somewhere between the residential colleges and the academic quad when Weston falls into step beside me.

awakened. Rythe clenched his teeth and sat up along the wall. "Then why hasn't she arrived yet?" Eshra glanced at the slice of blue that revealed itself through the rusty grates high above. "Because she waits," she replied to him. "She waits until the tide changes. And it is changing." The ground shook. There was a distant rumble in the pit—distant, but not natural. It wasn't plague. It was older. As if the bones of the Citadel were shifting their alignment.

Another was a door opening to fog. "I wasn't there," he stated. "But perhaps if enough of us experience it, it remains." She nodded, brushed the corner with wind. She felt it. --- 11:15 AM — Sector M, Stillbend Steps The stone steps had been rebalanced. Worn edges shaved just so that they felt new. But not enough to erase. Someone had scribbled a haiku on a sidewall in imbedded wire: > Stone under silence Holds the shape of each descent

Of a world that learned to listen to the silence. And found it was full of song. THE END

It had to be the best day of their lives because very soon, they would witness the most heartbreaking thing that would have ever happened to them. At that very moment, Sage said. “Where is Silver?” “What if he is eating our chips? He has been wanting to eat it” Silas said. Sage added. “You are right! That sly. Let us go and see what he is doing” Silver responded. “Alright, let us park the bicycle around that area…..” He pointed to the stony path “Let us take it to that tree” This was so interesting! It was now evident that the moon goddess was on my side.

Silver energy arced through the air like broken glass a s the ground cracked beneath my feet. I took a great, trembling, last breath. Then— Everything turned white.