A short walk through town
resurrects countless buildings
that exist now only in other forms.
Businesses and houses alike 
loom over us with the weight of years,
but the houses that cast the largest shadows
are the ones that are no longer there,
a grassy square or paved and pebbly lot.
These spaces were the pillars that housed the infrastructure
that defined the character of the whole town,
and even when they are gone,
physicality positions us back in the world
as a reminder of connected temporality.
We see a friend we once saw there, 
albeit now in a separate place,
alone, disparate, although still smiling. 
These firm structures show us
that the breakdown is part of the building-up
and add to the story instead of subtract from it,
something others might call 
a je ne sais quoi when English fails us,
just as the current world fails to bring back 
those buildings we walk by only in memory now.