recent observations, april.

monopoly money and magnolia petals, among other fallen things.

Men in suits are talking on the stoop.

The chatter of the house sparrows drowns out their words.

Around the corner, does anyone notice the remains of a basketball hoop in the middle of a grassy garden?

From my second-story window I can no longer see the statue of Our Blessed Mother in the garden across the street.

Behind the green construction wall, all I can see are stacks of lumber and a portable toilet, and the top of a blue tarp draped over the spot where the rose bushes are.

For a moment I let myself believe that maybe somebody thought to save them.

Outside the bodega, a tattered Monopoly game sits box-open among the discarded books.

Candy-colored bills are strewn on the rain-soaked sidewalk.

I’m awake in the middle of the night.

The algorithm feeds me videos of young couples restoring brownstones—

casually converting rental buildings into single-family homes.

15 people in a building. Then 8. Then 3.

Own it all.

Where’s the landlord who strips the lead paint from the century-old balustrade and preserves the housing?

All the rain makes the magnolia petals droop.

Soon they’ll drop, replacing the fallen Monopoly money on the sidewalk.

They’ll get crushed—turn brown—beneath the loafered feet of men who talk too loud on stoops.

Men who gobble up buildings.

Men who don’t know all the neighborhood magnolias by heart,

who don’t know to sniff the air when passing the Korean spice viburnum,

who miss the magic of the wisteria blooms by the subway overpass year after year.

Men who never once considered the rose garden

when they covered it up with a giant blue tarp.