The Street

Some of them are living ghosts, they have buried their roots under newer foundations, or they still live anonymously under a rock of poverty. If you asked me to name them I could not, for they all had names too similar to mine. The whole street, all its doors and windows, its narrow-broken pavements have been obliterated by the nazis or the iron booted rent collectors. Postwar postmen have no addresses to slot through. In my mind is a diorama of a history that I missed by being born late, yet the street knew me before I knew it. Now the ghosts are dying one by one. Those that left the street to become pink and abundant were happy to be alive for a while, as I was, until inevitably the diorama turned into a carousel of long gray sunsets.