September 2021
Skipping Walking my heart (good boy!) after lunch, suddenly my bored step hitches, stutters, propels me firmly up and forward, and look, I’m skipping, I’m skipping, I’m skipping like I haven’t in over half a century, one foot then the other bouncing lightly on its ball, springing my dull earthbound body along like a rock across water, lightly touching down, like a cantering horse on the verge of a gallop, a syncopated gait that swings my arms out for balance like the girls’ when I was a kid but so what, I let hands and hips sashay, lost my partner, what’ll I do, skip to my Lou, my darling heart leaping in my lifted chest as I dance on down the sidewalk, double-time. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
— Michael McFee O.Henry 53
