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Rain gathers along the edges of flat rooftops, pooling in the depressions, sheeting along the slick flashing until it overfills the bead along the bottom edge and trickles onto the building face, seeping down the freshly-painted surface like a slow waterfall, like time running down, like the red pool spreading on the pavement around another accident. Memorial murals of our departed children, fifty feet, a hundred feet tall, dwarf us. Their stuccoed walls and dedicated lighting are the only new construction here for years. Our children, made famous by bits of quick metal, gaze to the left or right of us, no matter where we stand, at something just beyond us that we never saw coming and could not have prevented. The local way to put it is it serves the kids right for being born here. And it’s surely criminal to live like this. They have no business being here, and nobody can make a case for wanting to. In their memorial poses, the new celebrities are rendered with doomed but hopeful looks like the faces of martyrs. Mural artists compete for the top commissions, not just big walls with clear views but the best stories, too, the subjects who were most vulnerable and haunted, like the children selected for milk cartons. What serious child of these streets could see those serene images lit from above and not think they might be the best shot at a legacy. We tell our children to make their own opportunities, but they know exactly what they have coming. They only hope to be worthy of their walls. In my nightmare they make deals to audition for them. Behind the drugstore, broken streetlight, wear your black cap backwards. My brother will do you after you do me. They’ll paint us a city block.

Copyright © December 4, 2006