Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

Odile Cornuz

MY SIDEWALK

Clean clean clean. The sidewalk is clean clean clean. A proper sidewalk is properly clean. Clean is what the sidewalk is. Clean is what it ’s meant to be. Oh, the sidewalk is clean. It is clean, it ’s meant to be clean, this sidewalk is. My sidewalk is clean. My sidewalk. My sidewalk is becoming clean. The sidewalk in general isn’t clean, but mine is. My own sidewalk. Not the sidewalk. The sidewalk becomes my sidewalk when it ’s clean. My sidewalk is becoming clean. It ’s becoming clean because I walk. Clean because I bend down. The sidewalk becomes my sidewalk because I touch it. It ’s not well-liked. It gets dirty. They make it dirty. They walk and they drop trash and they piss and they spit. They run and they get lost and they forget and they put things down and they break things. Me, I walk. I walk and I bend down. It ’s not their sidewalk. To them, it ’s a sidewalk. Just another sidewalk. A sidewalk like any other. One more sidewalk. A sidewalk along the edge of a road. A street. One of the city streets. A sidewalk that runs along one of the city streets. A sidewalk with its holes, its patches. A few drains, rusted iron grates. For me, these are waves. Waves from the mouths of the drains. Friendly waves that swallow everything. That don’t spit out the cigarette butts. That don’t speak. On the edge of the sidewalk.

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