No one nowhere, no how...

My neighborhood is ghostly and has been like this all week. Outside, it's cloudy and polluted, so the sky is weirdly white, like those photographs of skies in China. The air is muggy and close, so in the early morning bits of fog hang close to the grass. And it's silent here. There are no dogs barking, no cars gunning, no skateboards whirring on the streets. No sharp children's cries, no sounds of neighbors calling to one another. People are either in their houses or gone someplace. When I leave the house to get cigarettes or cat food, there's no one outside to wave to or smile at.

Today, on my way to Walgreen's, I saw one of my neighbors walking her dog. She's really a distant friend of my husband's and never remembers me. Still, because I'm very fond of her snowy Alaskan malmute, I always wave when I see her and she usually smiles back, if uncertainly. But this morning she was talking on her cell, and didn't notice me driving past.

Where are they? Where has everyone gone?

This week, in the mornings, when I pause at the doorway to let a cat in or out, the silence has been as palpable as a rainstorm. I feel it around me, this sensation of quiet and stillness. There's no one here. No one. Where are they? Where has everyone gone?

Driving back from the drugstore, I came up one of our more manicured streets. On a well-clipped lawn, but back away from the street, I spotted a bottle tree. Bottles of all colors: clear blue, transparent green, shining brown, and glittery red were poked onto the ends of its branches. To keep the spirits in, I've been told, rather than floating free.

Where are they? Where has everyone gone?

Maybe that's what's happened. All our sounds and presences are caught, trapped in a bunch of bottles on San Lorenzo Street.

Go figure.