Potholes In Pittsburgh - last friday

You came home and nothing was the same... shit... The movie theater's a church now, the church is half for sale, the diner still pours burnt coffee for the same six men at seven a.m. They don't ask my name anymore— they ask if I'm "back for good." I tell them, "Just for the weekend," like I've been saying for the last six years. The grocery store where my mom bought birthday cakes is a parking lot growing weeds through faded yellow lines. Somebody spray-painted "WE WERE HERE" across the loading dock. I think that's all any of us were ever trying to say. The creek still runs behind the Little League field, carrying baseballs, empty cans, and every version of ourselves that thought seventeen was the oldest we'd ever be. I drove past your house. Different mailbox. Different truck. Different dog barking from the same cracked porch. It's weird how memories never update. The water tower still leans over everything like it's waiting for someone to come back and explain why they left. Maybe towns don't die. Maybe they just get quieter until the only people listening are the ones who couldn't leave or the ones who keep coming back to make sure they actually did. So I sat on the hood of my car behind the old strip mall, watching the sun disappear behind boarded-up windows that used to glow every Friday night. For a second, I could almost hear shopping carts, kids laughing, someone yelling, "Meet me up front." Then the wind pushed an old receipt across the pavement. And it sounded enough like applause that I stayed until it was dark.