“When she was a tiny thing, barely the size of a walnut – wrinkled almost beyond recognition -  I  remember holding her in my palm and thinking that she would grow into something rather large one day. That in only another thirty seconds she would not fit in my calloused hand any more, her graceful limbs pouring over my splayed fingers like sweet tea on a bed of summer sunshine, a softened petal falling towards hard, unforgiving concrete. I knew that one day she would grow so big, my hand a small, 60's coffee shop to her Empire State Building. I knew that one day she would topple out of my  grasping fingers, plummeting to whatever laid below. I could only hope that she would land on her feet. “

And here I stand, feet aching from their sudden slap against the black top.