We fill some of the spaces with our anticipatory presence, some with our accreted absence.

We have abandoned these streets and facades strategically before, in memorial circumstance

and peripheral glee,

until our legacies could do nothing but turn us away.

Everything breaks, a little bit, to see what it feels like.

It feels like defiance and nightfall and bright lights and waiting.

We gather to watch fire in the rain in the dark.

None of these elements are new,

but some of the things we want most are just things we want back.

We want to remember that our lives and cities can be torn apart and silenced, but then reilluminated.

We want to be reminded of our ability to glow,

and how we started things, and how they recur, and thus how we might and will persist when this is over.