An Assault

Wait. Is there something else that needs to be said?

She sets out on the street, her Converse shoes scuffed and beat, her gait awry from a soccer injury that stopped her dreaming of the sporting life. Her eyes are asquint, always scanning her vicinity. She is a restless woman, not young but also not old. She staggers on the fulcrum of her lifespan, and it might go either way, like a ride in a dream of a playground. 

The afternoon is lukewarm, a fetid breeze coming down from the hills like the...