Caution Tape (Imagination)

The stairs aren’t safe. Yes, they will hold your weight. Yes, your balance might compensate for the missing handrail. And the missing wall.

But still, we don’t want you to travel up those stairs. You see, it isn’t about you.

Unseen, in the attic, two stories up, a crew is demolishing a floor deck.

They can’t see you, no hard hat, tottering up those stairs.

The rending of hundred-year-old planks splinters the air. That crew doesn’t hear you. That crew doesn’t hear the boom box thundering Metallica bass lines. So, when chunks of wood plummet two stories and lodge themselves in your skull, no one will come to your rescue.

OK, so it is about you.

Dom, a laborer whose story I will tell more fully another day, was asked to caution tape the stairs. The site super instructs, “I don’t care what color you use, or how you do it. Just prevent anyone from going up those stairs. Make a web for all I care.”

If you are prone to snap judgements, you might call Dom a ditch-digger, so Dom sails under the radar. He leaves jewels in his wake, though, then waits like a spider for the sparkle to draw you in to his trap.

And smiles his wide, wide smile when you catch him paying strict attention to the moment.