Lark
The heat was heavy. Summertime straining on Lark’s back. His shoulders were damp, just like the skin along side his small frame. Bleach-blonde hair that was lighter at the tips fell from their sleep-spiked foundation, clinging to his temples, trailing gel across his forehead. Sweat and dirt stinging in his eyes.
Lark was moving boxes in the middle of the afternoon. Corrugated cardboard boxes, taped up and tied together. Filled up with things he had no idea about. He didn’t ask questions, he didn’t want answers. In a city where work was hard to come by, it was better not to know what was being transported just how much spare change if paid.
His white tee shirt stained through with his body’s heat, tiny heart shaped lips were chapped. Muted-toned clover green eyes were hardlined in sleepness nights. Tip of his nose always, always, always a light blush of red. He grunted in a quiet voice each time he picked a box up, slender arms pulsing against the weight. He was moving boxes from one apartment to a truck, but the apartment was fully furnished and no one seemed to be moving.
The girl inside even offered him lemonade, he was glad he liked slightly sour things.
Lark had lived in the city for only a few months and somehow he must had had a boyish face most people he encountered could trust. He got away with sleeping on strangers’ couches and eating for free in small diners. When he smiled his eyes closed and his whole body moved foward, like it was a note hit in a song.
Lark was small, five foot six at most and he looked as young as he was. Fingers always inkstained from stories he wrote on napkins and notebooks when he got a chance. His voice light with a non-commital accent. It could have been from anywhere.
Just like Lark was from, anywhere.
The boy had been traveling since he was sixteen with a pocketfull of stolen cash from his mother’s drawer. He hated to do it, leaving tear-stained goodbyes on the answering machine when he was too far to be traced. Lark ran out of the money a long, long time ago and it had been moving boxes and other small things since then. He was working hard enough to try and get a tiny apartment of his own. It was all he really wanted, even just a small little room in the back of someone else’s house. Maybe somewhere high above next to a bakery where the smoke smelled like bread at 4am.
Things like that, the tiny, little, insignificant things were the things Lark loved best. And there was always so many, tiny, insignificant things he came across. Corrugated cardboard boxes, taped and tied together with insides that were mysteries. And even though Lark didn’t like mysteries, sometimes he couldn’t help it and sometimes he was one.
And sometimes he played it up, smiling wide and being agressive. Getting what he wanted and saying as little as possible. The heat was heavy but he got two cups of lemonade that day, because he was the only one with enough guts to ask.
