That I’m too young and too dumb to see I was like a reverse Michael Jordan up there, floating, and all that so-and-so. Pretty soon I’m hanging from the damn thing. Forehead so tight it got to be shining like a eight ball. I grab on to the shoe, and pull hard, my breath chugging. You don’t be studying no studying, if you see what I mean. Some days TV and floating shoes trumps homework. But hear me on this-every day’s a new day. Girl been supposed to be doing her homework-just like me. ” and “Face facts, Dontrell, DNA doesn’t lie,” and, “McDonald’s DOUBLE filet of Fish, when you want one, you gotta have one.” She got that bad boy up loud, too, so I can hear people talking about, “Now hold on, Wayne, if she’s the mother of your son, the least you can do. I can hear Mama banging pots and pans in the kitchen, and Maury on the TV, meaning Daiziah home from school. Turn back to my door like I’m fenda go ask somebody to come have a look, but I don’t know who in this house gonna explain this. I tug, a couple more times, then give up.

Feel my neck start to warm up again, and my hands tremble a little. It ain’t hanging from nothing I can see, just up there where it don’t belong. It’s like it’s glued up there in the air, and much as I tug and pull on it, that bad boy ain’t coming down. Then I smile at my foolish, foolish dumb-ass ass, and I say to myself my brother Ricky had done strung it up from the ceiling. Soon as I see it, my heart kinda go pie-yow! and my neck get hot. Walk into my room and come to find one of my Jordan Air Max 360s floating about five foot off the ground.

I Get on the Bus by Reginald McKnight