By Peter Kahn
4:37 a.m.—Trash fires line the curbs of clean-swept cobblestone streets, leading him through the city.
At a bus stop, a hand-drawn cart contains a small boy, trapped among burlap bags of sorted rags. A woman nearby, stooped and ancient, hunts through piles of already sifted trash.
The boy’s solemn eyes lock with his—beneath the sign for bus stop 437—drawing him deep inside a well of want and despair, inciting an irresistible desire to give of himself.
4:38 a.m.—Bewildered, now seated among filthy sacks, he watches a young man spring away, leaping over curbside fires, dancing.
This is good! I love the idea of his being drawn into the ‘well of want and despair’. Usually we draw out of a well. It has an almost gothic feel, like Poe maybe?