Geography of Gone

The sidewalk knows
our footsteps still.

Each house holds
its new silence—
the Davidsons’ porch
where no one waves,
the Kemps’ garden
growing wild
with someone else’s
neglect.

We walk the same route
but the route
no longer walks
with us.

The neighborhood remembers what we forget.

Mrs. Madison’s kitchen window
frames a stranger’s breakfast.
The light falls
in the same slant
across a table
where different voices
say grace.

Some geographies
survive their people.
Others follow them
into absence.

We walk the same route—
past the oak
where Patty’s swing
hung until last spring,
past the corner
where the Sullivans’ dog
used to bark
at our morning passage.

The neighborhood remembers.

What is it
to be the last
to know a place
as it was?
To carry
the old map
in your chest
while walking
the new territory?

The mailboxes
wear unfamiliar names
like borrowed clothes.
Even the house numbers
seem surprised
by who they belong to
now.

We walk the same route
but we are walking
through memory
made manifest—
each step a small
archaeology
of what was
here.

The neighborhood remembers
what we cannot forget.