YELLOW TAPE Nothing is groundbreaking in my neighborhood, nothing but the ground breaking. Cracked streets and sidewalks are concealed by yellow tape. Cracked skulls on sidewalks, escalated due to the streets, concealed by yellow tape. Some things might never get fixed. Why does this stop us? Why does this stop us if the person we care about is lying on the ground, if the streets and buildings we love are injured? Because the tape reads do not enter? Somebody has to do something, or maybe something is too much. From the outside looking in you see what everyone else sees: a community, houses that stand in a row with little difference on the exterior, a school that stands sturdy but has its bruises. And a park that tells a story, a story from the inside. Now dirt hills arise sturdy like the metal structures that stand in the middle of the field. Fields that I used to play in are now in the hands of the future. The park that raised me will soon become secondary to a gym exactly 15 steps away from it. The 15 steps will be 15 minutes of memories. A long walk. The swings in the park don’t screech but are not played on. My prints in the grass cannot be traced, because they are covered. Voices cannot be heard because of construction. I feel empty, because my park is. As I grow old it ages with me. My thoughts are like the writing on the wall, scrambled full of pain but can never be erased.
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