The brownstone down the block is gone.
It’s just gone.
Last time I looked
it was an abandoned structure,
sure,
but now it’s gone.
Totally gone
– probably irrevocably so.

How’d I miss it?
I’m home a lot.
Mightn’t I have heard such demolition,
just next door?
Maybe my hearing aid
needs a new battery.
My upstairs neighbor always says
I wouldn’t notice my head if it were cut off, which is a pretty strange thing to say. Why didn’t she tell me
about the building being abolished?

Now that I think about it
where has my neighbor been lately?

The worlds change every day
in sometimes imperceptible ways
but this
this shouldn’t be one of them.
A part of my neighborhood
has been eradicated on my watch
but I wasn’t watching.
What will become of us?

I hope it’s a Talbot’s moving in.