Yes Virginia, There Are Such Things As Monsters

I only met the guy once, but I talked to her a couple of times back when she was above Exile on Grace street. No, me and Mary talked to them both once, walking down main, up by chimborazo park, and someone told us later who they were. Then the Newspaper told us later, years later, no, somebody on the internet before that, just a month ago, told us who they were. They were the butchered Richmond family, and they had always been the same as us. Artists in the transitional neighborhood, artists who eventually had kids. Struggled around money, saved some up and made a house around themselves, made a life around their art. Made their kids around their art. Laughed and ruined pasta with so-and-so, had some wine, the kids playing together.

And then the monsters came in through the front door.

I have no right to be writing this, no I have every right. It is a hideous event and there is no way to form words around it.

A small atomic device has exploded off Forest Hills Avenue and the fallout will unspeakably erode those hit by it’s poisoning radius for the rest of their lives.

Unspeakable throughout the thing’s long history, crippled maples somehow dying against that sad avenue, the cops who took them out eventually passing away. The story untold from one generation to the next, but passed, unspeakable and forever hideous, nonetheless.