The Crack in the Sidewalk by Ian Riley

The crack on the sidewalk was filled with dirt. It was the dirt of the centuries past, it was dirty dirt, the best kind. Dirt is made up of really small rocks. These rocks were really, really small, on account of how old they were. They were so small that a single grain of this dirt was barely visible to the human eye. They filled up the crack on the sidewalk with ease, though.

There was an ant in the crack on the sidewalk too. He liked the dirt because it was easy to move. He called all his ant friends and told them about the crack on the sidewalk. They all came and started to build an ant hill. The landscape was changing. The ants built the dirt high into the sky, out of the crack of the sidewalk and into the open air. They built it high so they could go low. They burrowed into the century-old dirt and started a colony. The crack was soon filled to the brim with ants, and over the brim with dirt. The crack in the sidewalk wasn’t really a crack anymore. It was a crack in the armor of the sidewalk, but it was filled up with dirt and ants. The crack was plugged.

The bottom of the shoe was made of rubber. This rubber had come from a tree in the Amazon forest which was almost as old as the dirt in the crack on the sidewalk. There was a hunter in the forest who had shot a bird which landed on this tree, and the tree was covered in blood and guts. The rubber on the bottom of the shoe was making its way along the sidewalk and saw the century-old dirt rising out of the crack on the sidewalk. The century old dirt was scattered out of the crack on the sidewalk, onto the top surface, and the ants ran away, and the crack was plugged no longer. The blood and guts of the ants that didn’t get away were scattered on the rubber bottom of the shoe.

The shoe was connected to a nine year old leg, and the leg was connected to a nine year old boy. The dirt from the crack on the sidewalk was carried in the blood and guts of the ants on the rubber bottom of the shoe to the bus stop by the nine year old leg connected to the nine year old boy. The nine year old leg connected to the nine year old boy carried the nine year old boy onto a yellow school bus that was nine years old.

The yellow school bus was driven by a man whose name no one knew or cared to know. It had been driven the on same route by the same man for the last five years. He wore the same wrinkled gray shirt, and the same cracked green sunglasses every day. When he was done with his shift, he would take the same route home, and stop at the same coffee shop for the same pastry and the same coffee. His car smelled like fresh pine needles.

The fresh pine needles that the man’s car smelled like smelled like the pine tree in the man whose name no one knew or cared to know’s back yard. The pine tree was located next to the man’s garden, which he tended to each day at the same time when he got home from work. He pulled the flowers out and let the weeds grow. He liked the weeds because they weren’t like him. They grew together to beat out the flowers that would only pop up here and there, always by themselves. It was the same drill over and over.


The man whose name no one knew or cared to know checked his garden that day the same way he always did. He walked towards his house and he smelled the same smell of fresh pine needles from his car. His house smelled like pine needles too.

[Ian wrote this after reading too much Sherwood Anderson.]