Sunshine, glorious sun streams over the front yard. It’s only fifty-three degrees but it feels like a slice of Heaven. We curl up in jeans and hoodies on the porch…the wind chimes bang wildly, madly in the sunny wind; splintering chips of white paint.
He listens to Salsa Vieja…a song about having fun in New York City in the summer. I close my eyes in the sun and think about New York…those blistering sidewalks in August, the surging life steam rising off the walls, an early dinner at The Heights on Broadway or the screeching early 4am dream where workers hustle to load supplies into a diner. They disappear through a rectangular hole in the sidewalk…up and down stairs at a risky 90 degree angle. Moving, lifting, swinging, shouting, sweating heavily, so fast, so fast…slamming the heavy metal doors…boom. In a flash, they climb back in to the big rig which is double, triple parked and they pull out fast as fast…at an impossible angle. They’re gone. It’s 4:45am.
I wonder when I will go back.
I open my eyes. A few neighbors walk by, walking dogs, waving cautiously…people we don’t know, but we are all in this together. ‘The ghosts are coming out’ he states simply. ‘The ghosts?’ I ask. He stares down the street. ‘All the people we have never seen’.
The wind picks up again, slamming chimes against the post. It’s so fierce. Blowing ghosts and viruses all around…
690 Saint Paul 