Damn, I’m going to have to stop.
As I wait, I look idly at the cars and landscape around me.
The song on the radio is not quite annoying enough to change.
I glance to my left, there’s a vacant lot overgrown with weeds.
It’s odd that the lot would be empty, this intersection is chock full of clutter,
a video store,
a nail salon,
a store full of exercise equipment,
a place that sells cell phones,
all the modern necessities.
Then I notice, right at road’s edge and leading up to the empty lot,
three concrete steps.
Three small concrete steps to nowhere.
There must have once been a house on this site.
Perhaps a family, maybe a cat.
It must have been a long time ago though.
Probably back when moms stayed home and raised the kids.
How quaint, I thought.
People must have lived here before children were raised by brightly lit game machines.
I pictured daddy coming home after a day of work,
parking his car in the driveway, climbing those steps to ….
to what?
Did the children run squealing to the door?
“Daddy’s home”!
Did his wife meet him at the door and give him a sly little kiss and a secret pinch on the butt?
Or did he climb those steps to enter a cold house
with surly kids withdrawn to distant cave rooms,
and a cold angry wife just biding her time?
Was this a warm home or was it a house of ice?
Where are those people now?
Two staccato beeps from behind rouse me from my reverie.
The light in front of me is green.
The cars that had blocked my path are now gone.
I step on the gas and speed through the intersection.
I must not tarry.
I have my own steps to climb.