Oh little ghost town, beholden to industry; what say you? Born in a barbed wire nest, singing from behind the cat’s teeth. What is the market value, do you think, on the sidewalk where I fell off my bike and scraped my knees and the flecks of blood left behind lingered for two Tuesdays before the summer rains came back around (we had been praying for them!) and washed them into the soil? Or the kitchen with the window facing the train line and where Ma spilled a whole bottle of milk so we threw the doors open and hollered for the neighbourhood cats. It doesn’t matter. The trains don’t run this way no more anyhow and the grass has grown through the old tracks. I miss the smell of cigarettes and molasses and iodine. Everything changes, everything stays the same. I’ll never have the wisdom to know the difference.
