Lime Ave Revisited

Sunday I went to the old neighborhood.
The corner store is boarded up now
and a black spiked fence
surrounds the school.
Our old house looked awful,
no curtains, only shades pulled down,
and the yard was just dead weeds.
It’s still the same bad blue.
I thought maybe it was abandoned
but a woman in a Dodge sedan
pulled into the driveway and waited,
left the car running,
didn’t honk or anything
and after a while,
a youngish girl came out.
She had on a wool skirt,
dark hair hung in front of her face.
She got in on the passenger side
and they didn’t seem to greet each other
or maybe the movements
were so small that I couldn’t tell.
And I realized
whatever their relationship was,
mother/daughter, aunt/niece,
some sort of friends,
that they were going to church
together.
The woman put the car in reverse
and turned her head,
waiting for traffic to pass.
It was always a tough driveway
to back out of.

Published in Pith

Photo by Tuce on Unsplash