Sitting on the porch, trying to describe the lawn:

On the far left, a crooked chain-link fence leans over an overgrown gravel drive. The drive hasn’t seen a car in years — they all park on the street. A man-sized dead sapling, fallen who knows how long ago, hunches on the drive by the gate.

Next to the drive, a fir tree stretches to roof height and bends over the lawn. Bread crumbs are scattered about its trunk and picked over by small gray-brown twittering birds. The frame of a long-departed swing watches over the other end of the yard, ten paces or so from the tree. In the space between, a swath of ankle-high grass competes for dominance with clover and dandelions.

On this side of the lawn, an uneven path of gray brick flanks our small two-story apartment building, from the drive on one side to a little shed on the other. It’s briefly interrupted by a pair of old-style basement doors that could have been imported from Kansas.

The weather has been sullen all week. Overhead, past the tops of brick tenements, past the high ridge that rears up beside the river, rain clouds sail downstream like frigates.

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