Sunshine, glorious sunshine streaming over the front yard. It’s only 53 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. He’s listening to Salsa Vieja…a song about having fun in New York in the summer.
I close my eyes in the cold sun and think about New York…those blistering sidewalks in August, the surging life steam rising off the walls, at an early dinner at The Heights on Broadway or at 4am as workers hustle to load supplies into a diner…they disappear through a rectangular hole in the sidewalk…pitching, running up and down stairs at a 90 degree angle. Moving, lifting, swinging, shouting, sweating heavily, so fast, so fast…slamming the heavy metal doors…boom. In a flash, they climb in the idling vehicle parked up on the sidewalk and in a New York minute the truck pulls out into traffic at a charging roaring angle. They’re gone. It’s 4:45am.
I wonder when I will go back.
I open my eyes. A few neighbors stroll by, walking dogs, waving cautiously to us seated on the porch…people we don’t know, but we are all in this together.
‘The ghosts are coming out’ he states simply. ‘The ghosts?’ I ask. ‘All the people we have never seen’.
The wind picks up again, slamming the chimes against the posts. It’s so fierce. Blowing ghosts and viruses all around…
690 Saint Paul 