Center Demolition

It was the sidewalk equivalent
of crooked teeth, so bad,
she had to walk on the edge
of the roadside.
Grids of fences surrounding
gutted factories now mostly
ruble aside from some
administration.

A man in a suit stood alone
next to a small white helicopter
at the center of one of the perimeters.
She looked through one of the rounded
diamonds in the fence at him,
and wondered where he came from.
He noticed her and took a red handkerchief
out of his pocket and held it over his head
so that the wind caught it.

She stepped quickly away from her
vantage point worried she was causing
people trouble, and took a shortcut
through a small gap between two
of the properties. At the end of the alley
was the outline of a man, but it never
got clearer, the closer she got,
and she began to regret showing up to
this place to begin with.

She fell backwards
as if she was tackled by nothing,
and when her head hit the concrete
the lights in her brain surged
like the notes in a solo.
Laying like that in the alley
at the center demolition
she watched as a ghost passed over the site,
and then there was a final light.
The dust from all the deals
crept over the city.