A Walk Down with the Devil

I am coming down from the second floor

Wearing my mother’s slippers

I am six or seven years old

Disaster lurks on the metal railing

There is no proper banister here

Concrete stairs beneath my feet

A path to hell

Mom is cooking in the kitchen downstairs

She has to see me, see her grown-up slippers

On my tiny feet

Step one, two, three

I walk with the devil on my shoulder

A few steps and it’s over

I land on the marble floor, a story below

Blood spurts from my lower lip

A scar remains; my head survived

That scar haunts me to this day

Just as my mind changed that day

Did that event determine my future

As a skilled novelist, a creator of stories

Living in my head, and then on paper?

No one will ever know

Only conjecture remains