Not My Street

I walk out the door of 100 Men Hall and birds sing, as if they’ve been doing that all along. Not one bird, two birds—an orchestra of birds, thrumming beneath the afternoon. I follow the sound and find the masses congregated on a cell tower. My sister Marcee goes downtown in Raleigh in the evenings to see the chimney sweeps dive into shelter. She says we’re losing chimneys. The artificial places we made that animals took as their own, we are destroying them.

A flag crumples in the breeze. It carries a 100 Men Hall icon. The flag reminds me the kids want a marine 100 Men Hall flag to fly on the boat. They’re lobbying for it. Next to the Tin Shed, I think I’m seeing a clothesline with wash drying, but its 100 Men Hall banners grommeted to string lights. 

Down the road, I realize I can’t name the things I see because they aren’t mine. Are the purple blooms part of the bush with its dried pods already hibernating for the winter? Or do they belong to an interloper?The quaking seeds on the bush shiver in the breeze like Aspens on the Colorado slopes.

One house announces itself with words: “Beach House.” The other uses a life preserver. And numbers. Not like a street address, like an incantation. Up and down the street, USA flags fly. Some old, some brand spanking new. One whips, the image blurs. The flag whips back, but the stripes return wavery as a snake creeping up and down in fallen leaves. The stars, embarrassed to be found flat-footed, cartwheel, remembering the joy of the explosion that turned them into God’s pure light. Flash, bang! The flag has come alive, but not,  I don’t think, in a way the cheery beach house on Union Street intended. 

So many “For Sale” signs in the yards for such a short stretch of street. One leans in an empty lot with two Katrina remnant driveways. Between the driveways squats a gigantic live oak. Herein lies the problem for whomever is trying to sell the lot. A huge, valuable, protected tree in the lot’s foreground. On the far edge of the lot, a gravel drive squiggles to another house. Higlety-pigelty, like lots throughout the Coast, got no respect for the rectangle. The birds, high on their tower, bless my wanderings. A new clumps appears from the north, descending. Then another. And another. No explanation, at least not by me. The birds know what they’re doing.

I’m certain someone in one of these houses is watching me watch their street. Any minute now, Mississippi will saunter out. “What you doing looking at my things?” Up close, the paint peels from the 100 Men Hall mural. From far away, the woman’s smile is perfect. 

Not My Street is a micro-essay written during our gathering at The Writing Room at 100 Men Hall yesterday morning.