My Lonely City

My neighborhood is a zero-lot-line addition. This means that each home is built with one exterior wall on the lot line of the neighbor’s property, and that wall makes up part of that neighbor’s backyard fence. Obviously there are no windows in that wall. The other windows in the houses face either forward toward the street, backward into one’s own yard (with its comes-standard privacy fence) or occasionally sideways onto one’s front yard. Everyone keeps their windows covered; plantation or imitation-plantation (tongue-twisters of the world, unite!) blinds are the most popular.

We’re all trapped in these cages, living in solitary confinement. We’re cordoned off by windowless walls and wooden fences, rattling against our loneliness like pebbles in an empty jar.