laterer

Number 10 Kalhanska street was a two story house with an attic; like most of the houses on the street it had a stone wall around it with an iron gate painted white. Now the gate has only one door, and the house is just walls with no roof and windows with no glass. The bright Bosnia sun streams right down in past the free standing chimney, hitting the ground floor and nourishing the carpet of plants there: Ailanthus altissima, of course (the tree that grows in Brooklyn), and a few fig trees too young yet for figs, and vines that wrap around the empty window frames and cling to what's left of the balcony.

It's not a big house - just five windows across, big enough for a family making a life. They used to get mail here, addressed 10 Kalhanska; maybe they had parties or fights that the neighbors could hear.

I wonder where they are now, the people that used to come home to this house, if they are in Serbia or Sweden or still here in Bosnia, living down the street in a new bright yellow building or in one of the many marked and unmarked graveyards of this land. If they are alive I wonder if they come back here, if they ever even think about this place they used to live, or if it is just one more piece of a past that is best for being over.