heavy, sad steps

Sad, heavy footsteps. It was a group of three, all women. Shortly after 10 am, on a Thursday. The tallest and largest of the group held her hand close to her face, sucking the butt of a cigarette and exhaling the smoke into the grayness of the city around her. A pair of dogs got into a scuffle behind them, an apathetic owner that had allowed his black poodle to roam without a leash. The women plodded on, at odds with the thin, put together dog owner apologizing in the wrong language. It wasn't despair or disdain etched into their faces. Nothing that strong. If these women conveyed anything at all it was an apathy, a somber "being," a sense of years behind and nothing ahead displayed there for all the world to see. Slogging through a life that hadn't treated them perfect and wasn't changing anytime soon, grown heavy and old and tired, with every footfall punctuating that loss of spark, of zest, of life. 

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