growth

This neighborhood is growing up. Last year, the parking lot behind our house was turned into a row of tightly-packed houses. And I guess it's nicer to have houses than a parking lot. But I'm starting to feel closed in.

Now, around the corner, they're developing what was a grassy lot into some more buildings. Apartments or houses, I'm not sure. But skeletons are going up.

There are still a few dedicated spaces around that seem safe for now. Parks, plazas. But there's something about a weedy empty lot. Wild grasses blowing. With no requirement to be anything, no imperative to please children or provide benches to seat the elderly for a respite. No need to do anything but be overgrown, to shelter in its neglected embrace forlorn lost and forgotten items - key chains, receipts, a kindergartener's dirty beat-up plastic toys. To facilitate the occasional shortcut across its tangled swaths. To give us breathing space.