Spring City

I think I hate this city the most in the spring.

It’s the irony that gets me I think – in spite of the newness of the season, the warm winds of beginnings…it’s so intolerably sad here. The soft white blanket that was hiding all the old filth all winter is being pulled away in increments by the well-meaning sun as it tries to wake us from our sleep. I drag my feet over the grimy path and see the bread crumb trails of broken spirits - scattered garbage, needles, condoms, clothing in trees and bushes, lonely shoes, the head of a child’s doll. My toe catches a heavy kitchen knife with half the blade busted off and sends it spinning across the cement. I feel a bitter smile spread when it comes to rest at an angle – it looks as though someone plunged it into the sidewalk, as though they stabbed this street in the back and left it for dead.

I watch the run-down house down the block. A young boy in a grimy white t-shirt leans as far as he can out the open upstairs window and spits with impressive trajectory into the street below. Emerging from the torn screen door in bare feet, phone tucked into her shoulder, is his mother, cigarette in one hand, half-empty coffee pot in the other. She sits on the splitting boards of the step, tucks her cigarette into the corner of her mouth, and wipes her eyes with the heel of her free hand.

So intolerably sad.

I miss the springs I grew up with. I miss the first chirp of the frogs, the soothing chorus of clicks like dozens of mechanics lazily swinging their ratchets. I want to see chips of wood fall to the deck as my brother whittles little wooden boats to run in the mazes of little streams. Not the chips fall off these city children’s shoulders as they walk with heavy steps down the street, throwing their shoulders back with a practiced swagger beyond their years trying to make themselves look bigger, older, tougher, more resilient. It makes me sad. I want to leave this place.