33°47'20" North, 118°4'47" West

We. Lived in(side) a safe neighborhood.
Hidden in(side) a brick wall, the housing tract removed itself from the outside world. Walls.

Each individual brick that was laid there one by one when the wall was being built agreed…
we are selective. and strong.
People who did not live there and drove by there knew they did not belong there. The bricks told them so.

The brick-wall and tract was built by a man named Mr. Ross W. Cortese. The streets were 40 feet wide to be exact.
The wider the streets, the richer the neighborhood.
Oh Beverly.
Oh Ross.

In the beginning, the housing tract accommodated mostly affluent middle-class working families. These families owned children. A dog. Sometimes a cat. And during the winter, in the late afternoon, hidden in(side) and behind the fences, the dogs would grow anxious with one another as they watched the air make the poisonous grey fluid climb down the thermometers that belonged to the houses. The children would go inside, the dogs would stay outside.
Knowing that the night and cold was approaching, they would call out to one another to satisfy their desperation.
Incessant barking fogged the twilight.

This was the sound of the neighborhood clearing its throat before turning out the lights and going to bed.
Crashing vowels that would echo in the cold, orange air.


Do you remember this sound?