The Grit of Bare Feet
The smell of sun-baked asphalt always brings back the sting of gravel against my heels. It is a dry, metallic scent, like heat rising from a radiator in mid-July. I remember the way the road felt beneath my skin—rough, unyielding, and vibrating with the hum of a day that refused to end. There was a specific kind of thirst that lived in the back of my throat, a dusty dryness that only tasted like tap water from a garden hose, metallic and cold. We spent hours waiting for nothing in particular, just the promise of someone else appearing around the bend to break the silence. The air was thick, heavy with the sound of cicadas buzzing in the trees, a rhythmic drone that seemed to pulse inside my own ears. We were small, anchored to the earth by the heat radiating upward, suspended in that long, golden stretch of time before the shadows grew tall. Does the pavement still hold the imprint of the ghosts we used to be?
Pradeep Kumar has captured this exact feeling of suspended time in his image titled Kids of Summer 2019. It reminds me that we are all just waiting for someone to meet us in the middle of the road. Does this stillness make you want to run back to the heat of your own childhood?
