"Don't you know where you're going?" he asks. "You grew up here, didn't you?"
Yes and no.
I know these streets quite well.
I broke my favorite high heels in that sewer drain cover, broke someone's heart at the ice cream shop 5 miles down the way, and broke down in a courthouse the same distance in the opposite direction. I opened my first art gallery on the corner of that one, and read my poetry aloud regularly right down the other.
I met Danny Trejo there, and the best hairdresser I've ever known two days later. I met a woman who can carve a Vulcan into any type of rock, and a little girl who is an heiress to a pizza dynasty. The two guys down that street make the world's finest turkey sandwich, no matter what the old guy who lives down that other street will tell you.
I moved to Southern California when I was 15 years old and I've been here since, mostly.
I cried my eyes out at that mall and then walked down that street to a hospital- with dry eyes and a bag full of theater candy, just a few minutes later, and spent the next two nights telling silly stories in the lobby. I made a whole box of candy in that shop at the corner, which closed and became a gamer house, which closed and became a taco shop, which closed and became a salon, which closed and became a bookstore, which closed before it even opened.
If you go far enough down this street, you'll be at the park where my husband proposed to me. It was more of a formality than anything else, will-you-marry-me written out in leaves. Only Dave could make a written formality so ephemeral.
He died barely two streets down from there, but I've never been to the house where it happened.
We adopted Perdita from the shelter down the way, and brought Flash home from the adoption center in the mall down the other block. I lived in the county jail down the same street, for four months.
If you turn right on this corner, you'll see my first apartment and the grocery store that burned down right next to it. One turn around that block and you're back on the freeway, from there, you can go anywhere.
There isn't an exit I haven't taken, but I don't know if that means I grew up here, or simply grew older here. I grew tired here.
I've lived here for half my life, and I know these streets even though I don't quite remember where I was going while I walked them.
So yes, I know these streets. And no, I have no idea where I'm going now.
Yes, maybe, probably, sort of,
and no.
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For the Day 2 challenge from WordPress Blogging University's Photo101. Prompt: Street.
Do you know the streets around you? Do you love my lego dino that the beautiful Dani Heart gifted to me, ages ago? (PS, Dani makes amazingly-crafted greeting cards, so if you're in need, check them out.)
