The Step Worn Hollow in the Middle

That afternoon I went to my grandmother's house to fetch a few bowls, and stood at the door longer than I needed to.

The step was right in front of me. A step I had climbed thousands of times and never once looked at. In the middle of the stone there was a shallow dip, no deeper than the palm of a hand, a little shinier than the rest. It had rained the day before and water still sat in the hollow, a small puddle holding a grey piece of sky.

I crouched to look. My five-year-old nephew had followed me and stood beside me.

"Auntie, why is this step all dented?"

"Because people's feet keep walking on it."

"Whose feet?"

"Grandma's, Grandpa's, mine, your mum and dad's. Yours too."

He looked down at his own feet, then at the dip, as if measuring whether his small foot would fit. Then he stepped up, placed it right in the middle of the hollow, and stood there, a little proud.

Afterwards I wrote this poem, on the back of an electricity bill, sitting on the step itself.

The Step

The step before Grandma's house
has sunk in the middle,
exactly the size of a sole.

Nobody carved it.
Nobody sat counting
how much each footstep wore away.

There were only mornings,
clogs, sandals, bare feet
passing, passing,
and something
left behind under the heel.

Rain gathers in the hollow,
one small puddle
holding a whole piece of sky.

That step
never once asked
what it was for.

It lay there, and was stepped on.

What the step does not say

The poem explains nothing, so the explaining lives here. I have thought a lot about the question "what is it for" in recent years, and tried many ways of answering: with goals, with work, with lists. Each one has felt a little forced, like trying to dig a hollow with willpower.

The step is not like that. It does exactly one thing: it lies where people pass. Its meaning was not put there at the start. It comes from the fact that every day someone walks over it and it stays and bears a little. Years later people can see the print of a foot without knowing whose.

That is only one way of looking, not an answer for anyone. Some people will read this and feel it fits what they do. Some will feel it has nothing to do with them, or that it is too sweet. That is fine. If you want another view in the same direction, a day of noting when I felt useful tells a similar story through one ordinary working day.

One more thing I want to say plainly, because poems tend to make everything sound gentler than it is: there have been stretches when I stood on my own step and saw no hollow at all, only flat stone, cold. That does not mean nothing is being left under the heel. It is only that wearing is slow, and the one doing the stepping is usually the last to see it.

If the writing will not come

Two reasons come up often. One is that you want the poem to say something large, and every line feels small. Try this instead: only describe the object, as if telling a child. The other is that you cannot find anything worn around you. In that case pick any object at all, and write exactly one sentence about the last time you touched it.

If poetry does not suit you, thanking the days when "nothing happened" also looks at ordinary things, in prose.

The next day my nephew stood on the step again and set both feet in the hollow. He looked at me, waiting for praise for something not hard at all.

"Does it fit?"

"Not quite yet."

"It will when you're bigger," I said.

He nodded, solemn, as if he had just been given a promise.