A Drawn Line

I stepped through the bottom corner of the porch screen and walked down the three brick steps onto the wide concrete sidewalk. Stretched across the paving slabs was a children's chalk grid, its white borders faded by foot traffic. Near the fifth square lay a blunt cylinder of yellow pavement chalk, worn flat on one edge. I knelt beside it, steadying my knee joints against the coarse stone. Gripping the chalk between both hands, I pulled its flat edge firmly along the pavement to connect an unfinished boundary. A crisp yellow segment bridged the seam with clean precision. The street remained quiet around my newly completed angle.