Behind the palm tree silhouettes pressed against a cotton candy sky, a crow caws with no voice in the distance responding. Maybe there's the whispering drone of the 680 freeway or a stray cat wandering by those dilapidated apartments. My consciousness has become a vignette, creeping up from the sides. Sometimes you'd sit on the curb just waiting for a car to drive by.
Things have changed. The streetmall we used to go bowling sometimes after school has become abandoned, except for a lonely liquor store and some hobo cars. The schools I went to got rebuilt with a steel fence surrounding it - maybe from all the school shooting complaints and mishaps over the years. When I was young, my neighbor and I would roamed the streets knocking on our friend's doors, looking for places to eat Sour Patch Kids or Takis without our parents knowing, building dirt ramps for tailwhips, or spending hours modifying our bikes. The children now go straight to tutoring or music lessons after school. All my peers are working their jobs, speeding ahead in the distance.
My neighbor Carol, an older lady, sits by her window every day waiting for something eventful to occur. Actually most of my neighbors do that. That or watch television.
I gotta get out of this town. Gotta get out of Duluth, gotta get out of Decateur, gotta get out of Fremont. For those not being busy reinventing themselves are busy dying. I gotta get out of here. I gotta, the way people need water.