Lotto tickets: 4.32pm

What a silly, squiggly sidewalk this is.

Instead of blazing up the steep hillside, it switches back, this way and that, carving out big zz’s into the scrubby, oaky space between a highway and the neighborhood I can call my own.

Since 2010 I’ve been wiggling up this path, sometimes skipping the long way and short-cutting up, like many others clearly have.

Somedays I want the harder, faster, rougher route. But today? What’s the rush. I’ve no more appointments and microwaveable rice at home. It’s barely fall but not yet dark. Plus, it’s nice to not know what these lotto tickets say.

What if? What if I really won a million dollars.

Well you’d only get half, you know that right? She says.

Yes, well, that’d be ok with me too. To trade one pair of angles and demons for another because really:

Does money buy happiness? Does it?

The gas station worker who sold me these tickets just now seemed so and last I checked his paycheck can’t be much.

And until I have to answer that, I might as well be happy to not. Since this crooked sidewalk doesn’t care who walks on it, or not at all.