The corner of Thurston and Chili Avenue speeds up just a little each day around 3:30pm or so. The sun shines brilliantly at the intersection where small groups gather. The afternoon’s drug sales are about to begin.
I glance over in their general direction. I am sitting in the relative safety of my car. I look over and around them. They look over and around me. What separates us is far more than skin color, ethnicity, class, vocation and a tightly secure door. These men were born under an endless sky and into a thousand lifetimes different from mine. No amount of good fencing will ever make us good neighbors because we are all suddenly very fragile at the corner where our two worlds meet; for a moment at the traffic light, stalled on the sunny corner of Thurston and Chili Avenue…
690 Saint Paul 