Two men are sitting in mismatched chairs -
one is wood, warped; the other fraying plastic -
amidst rubble in the middle of a street in
Dichato. Maybe playing cards, maybe drinking
scavenged coffee, or rum. Everything scavenged.
Saying little. The random devastation of our earth.
We cannot choose our homes, and some of us
love places perpetually balanced on the precipice
of ruin. One of the men looks past the other,
down the shattered street, the piles of stone
that were once houses. Smelling decay, smoldering
wood, excrement. “Somewhere in America,”
he says, “there is a young man who thinks his
life is a waste because the woman he loves
does not love him back.” The other man reclines
his head, on the verge of but not quite smiling. A
motion of ease, contentment, even of fulfillment.
He closes his eyes and waits for the fine intervals
when a breeze falls from the sea through what
remains of his city, and for a few seconds,
he smells brine, its sweet, unfathomable openness.