Alley Boys

by Adamson Wood

Joseph saw the boy in the alleyway, drooping like a garbage sack. "Are you alright," said Joseph to silence. The curls on the boy’s head reminded Joseph of an aged mop — tangled and tattered. And the closer Joseph got, the clearer he saw that this was a man, not a boy, huddled up like a hide-and-seek hug. “I can, can I get you anything?” he said to the once-maybe-still child. And the man-child spoke to him in crowded whimpers, and Joseph responded in muted smiles.

6S

Adamson Wood teaches composition and rhetoric at Lone Star College in Houston, Texas. He writes when his three small kids let him, which surprisingly is more than you'd expect.