From where I stand

at the third floor window of the tenement, the street looks shiny. It has been washed and rinsed by rain. Beyond the silver streaks of the streetcar tracks a single streetlight stands in a pool of wet light. It is night. St. Louis. Nineteen forty-seven. I have just come home from the orphanage to stay. Years later, I will be another person. I will almost not remember this summerónot at all. But for nowówith the streetlight reflecting an aura on the wet sidewalk, with dark behind me in the dirty two rooms we call home, for now, I see it all. Tomorrow I will begin to try to forget. But in this moment everything is clear: who I am, where I am, and the clean place that I have left behind. As clear as the streetlight: how distinct its limits in the vast dark and the rain.