Here is mine: (This is to be an allegory in the novel I am writing.)
Little Black Shoes
A tiny girl with a large red balloon wandered through the frozen streets. Tap, tap, tap, her feet hit the pavement; the shavings of stone grinding off with every step, each time her little, black shoes scraped the sidewalk.
Dozens passed her by; bickering couples, old women driven with senility, making their way to the baker's for a loaf of bread. Guffawing gentlemen took humor in her plight; children snickered and pointed with their beady eyes. Granted, they were thoughts in her head and no one even noticed her taking her neverending stroll.
She played with the long, black string and followed its path up to the red balloon, which towered over her head like a giant. She marveled over the contrast the red balloon had against the night sky and how it whispered when the wind rolled across its gleaming surface.
A mere inanimate object as it was, she had everything she ever needed.
Someone who would listen and not judge her.
Someone who was always there by her side.
Someone she could call on when she was sad.
Someone watching over her; someone she could love completely without fear of being too clingy... for you can never hold a balloon too tight.
She ran by The Streudel Shop; candies and delicacies shone in the moonlight. She flared through floral stands which stood aside the old river and she heard the fish clapping in and out of the water; a rhythm to match her beating heart. She bolted across an empty field, making her way to the small room she had made for herself out of old music boxes. They were stacked six high and two deep; four walls and a roof; she held them together with cement she gathered from the local carpenter. Every day for four weeks she went to his shop and took a hatful back to the land she would build on. She loved watching the grains swim together and treasured listening to the swooshing as they brushed against one another.
She sat in her makeshift house and cranked a music box. This particular box had a blue ballerina who danced and danced and was free and knew how to dream. She spun around while the box played By the Light of the Silvery Moon in G. She started another; this one had a green baby boot and played a tune she had never heard before.
She violently turned each knob and twirled each crank, causing welts to come up on her fingers and she listened to the maniacal tunes merge and fluctuate; bend and curve to create a mad melody which wafted through the streets of the town, causing birds to disperse and women to harbor their ears with their new fur mittens. She loved this song, for it was her own. Helter-skelter, topsy-turvy, higgedly-piggedly, muddled and messy and jumbled and wild.
Life was like that in her world.
As strange as it seemed, everything running together brought her to peace.
Suddenly, the wind picked up, whirring and buzzing like a hive of bees. It flapped its wings against the teeny tiny house and the door slammed open and shut, open and shut, open and shut, until it snapped and whacked off the hinges and shot into the air like a bullet! The suffering child's balloon argued with the wind, fighting and tearing while the girl clinched in fright in an attempt to hold the balloon still. The string gave way and popped, sending the balloon far into the night, never to be seen again by the child's eyes.
To think of the money she'd scraped together to get that balloon! The time she spent thumbing through the colors and sizes until she found the perfect friend!
How easy and yet how difficult it would be to replace
and what is the point when she knew how long balloons lasted?