(Photo Credit: Crispina Kemp)
Eleven broad mossy steps separated prosperity from poverty. Eleven stony ice cold steps. Neglected by both nature and nurture, these represented a cleave between hurt and happiness. Going up the eleven prosaic steps led a traveler on a path towards squalor and stupor, whereas coming down the same broad steps steered the traveler in the direction of prosperity and peace, in plenty.
This divide seemed to be eternal. A plague that brooked no eradication. A scourge that tolerated no exorcism. Yet the two co-existed, collided, coalesced and crisscrossed wonderfully and woefully, wantonly and wistfully.
Ironically the squalid slums with their stench and suffering looked down upon resplendent abodes that represented, in the eyes of the beholder, a ‘vulgar display of wealth.’ The accumulators of wealth, used to looking at the world with rose tinted glasses looked up at their neighbours with derision.
Yet it was one world and one humanity.
(Word Count: 150)
Written as part of the Crimson’s Creative Challenge #16 More details regarding this challenge may be found HERE.
1 comment
Like how you’ve reversed the usual ‘going up in the world’; like how you show prosperity as more a curse than a blessing. Indeed, the blindness of money. 🙂