124th Street

He used to be on my block. He used to sit on a blue milk crate in front of the parking garage, crumbs and lice in his beard, making bird calls. Once on my way back from the airport, from the new terminal in Detroit, he asked me for money. I gave him two quarters and he God blessed me and we never talked again.

Now he has that nail gun and it's like he's a new man. He carries it over his right shoulder and smokes a cigarette with his left hand, smiling through splotchy tooth enamel. I see him in the lot down the street, tromping through the weeds and stopping to rest on a cooler full of soda. He throws the empty cans at rats and picks up his nail gun and gets back to work. What's he building in there?

He's found a new spot and a paint-splattered tarp to cover himself. Sometimes at night I walk by and see eyes among the weeds. I think about raccoons and rats and ghosts.

The thing is, he's a Veteran. He went to Vietnam and watched whole villages torched in minutes. He was here during the crack epidemic, saw whole families go missing and turn up in the vacants, alive but without teeth and wearing vomit like a badge.

We think that history is on our side, that progress progresses. He counts less and less stars in the sky, and waits for us to suffocate.