You take Street Road back to the world,
pine needles fall nearby.
These places still exist, revisited
like a box of wilted baby pictures in a storage locker.
On a Sunday, you take Broad to Vine to I-95
and you take the exit to Pain and Mercy
and go to the places that kill you.
It all stands before you confident as ghosts.
320 Pine Court is still there and you drive slowly
and out of the passenger side window you see yourself
sprinting out the door
and you see yourself
walking behind Holly
over the pine needles
to the bus stop and the third grade
and your Oldsmobile is not where mom parked it
and a steakhouse replaces the woods you rode your bicycle through
and a wrought-iron gate keeps Street Road from Beech Court
and you want to call Kourtney Melendez and tell her she was the best friend you ever had
but you know that Cyprus and Spruce and Willow
are not to be revisited today.
Greg Probst is a teacher, writer, and filmmaker. He is the recipient of the Pam Perkins-Frederick Memorial Scholarship for the Marriage of Art and Poetry and the Dr. Allen Hoey Memorial Scholarship for Short Fiction. His writing has been featured in The Centurion, The Temple News, Hyphen, Rathalla Review, and through the Teachers Institute of Philadelphia. Probst is currently pursuing an MFA degree at Drexel University where he will be teaching first-year composition and creative writing.