That's what the afterlife amounted to in the end -- a line that curved into eternity. A waiting room without walls. I stood for what felt like centuries, though time doesn't quite work the same when you're dead. Names faded, faces blurred, and my memory crumbled like soil under rain.
But I remember home. And this is not it.
The hand-carved brownstones that once leaned into one another like old friends are gone, scraped away as if by some careless hand. In their place rise glass towers -- too sleek, too cold, their reflections slicing the sky into jagged pieces. Where cobbled roads once intertwined, wide asphalt veins now pulse with metal monsters. A hum fills the air like the angry buzz of a wasp, only colder, crueler -- more inhumane.
The lake where I skipped stones with my brothers, swam acres with my sisters, is buried alive, entombed in concrete pipes beneath the ground. I can still sense the faint whisper of water beneath the surface -- a muffled sob, perhaps -- but its song is eerily silent. Forever erased.
I drift down the central street. Or what had been the central street. The bakery that smelled of warm bread and cinnamon -- gone. The schoolyard where I used to sit under the elm tree, the small bridge I carved my initials into -- all replaced. There is a café where the old church used to stand, smelling faintly of squash and pumpkin, the scents hauntingly familiar despite the environmental disintegration. Even the air tastes different, filtered and flavored by machinery far beyond my comprehension.
People move through the streets like ghosts, eyes glued on handheld televisions. They never look up. Never see the light hitting the glass windowpanes or the buildings swaying slightly in the rough winds. They walk quickly, like they are late for something, though I feel they don't know what.
I wander for days -- or maybe years. I try finding the boundaries of this new landscape, but it stretches endlessly, looping itself until my mind feels numb from the continuity. Every corner has a sleeping car, every building has an automated entrance, every window a cheap reflection of this sleepless world. It is beautiful, in a sterile sort of way, but it isn't alive. It isn't home.
I find the place where my house once stood. I can feel it in my bones -- the slope of the hill, the bend of the wind. But now there is a gleaming apartment building, tall and sharp, its surface polished enough to show me what I have become.
I don't look human anymore. I don't look like anything. A cloud, a patch of mist, but certainly not flesh. I flicker, pieces of me fading and reappearing. The mirror image is faint, translucent, but if I look closer, I see the ghost of the past -- me kneeling in the garden, planting marigolds. I see the sunlight stifled by the linen curtains, the ever-present cobweb on the windowsill. And then I see the storm of debris, the dust cloud swallowing everything whole.
It isn't fair. This land is taken -- stolen, sold, and bought by those who will never know what it means to grow roots, to settle, to have a home. But I am past the point of interference. My voice makes no sound, my life holds no weight. I am only a ripple in the air.
At first, I stay near the apartment. I grace the elevators, my unseen presence the perpetual chill down the invaders' spines. It is petty, yes, but I need them to know someone has been here before them. That they are living on bones, on the bloodstains of my memory.
Some nights, when the city quiets, I drift through the hallways and whisper stories into their dreams. About the creek that once ran beneath their feet, about the children who played where their parking garage now sits. About laughter that didn't echo off steel and glass but warmed the oak trees like their radiators do now.
They never hear me. Or if they do, they blame the drafts.
As decades pass, the city grows. The sky shrinks between the buildings. Parks disappear, replaced by new developments. I stand beside the mighty trees as they are axed, soothing their trembling bark with my touch only they can feel. They have no roots left, no soil to cling to. I am all they have.
One day, I follow a horde of people gathering near the stained river. They are shouting, holding signs made of pulped bark, raving about gentrification and redevelopment, about who decides who lives and who dies. I hover near the edge of their crowd, invisible but listening. They speak of homes torn down, families pushed out, history erased for profit.
For a moment, I feel heard.
These people, ignorant as they may be, feel the same agony as I. They have their own aches of loss, stings of erasure. They are fighting to their last breath, but I can see it in their eyes: even they know how futile it is. The machines have already begun to roll in, their lights blinking like eyes never closed.
When the crowd disperses, I meander along the edge of the construction site. The air smells of dust and rotten ambition. A sign declares their project as a marvel of the times, an upgrade in comparison to the ramshackle homes that had been here prior. I wonder if they know what that means -- if they know they are building skeletons atop the shell of paradise.
Sometimes I think I stay because I can't leave until someone hears me. But who will? The city has no memory. It barrels over what it doesn't want seen.
They call this progress. I suppose, from a distance, it may be. The city shines brighter than ever. People live higher, move faster. But I can't help thinking they've built themselves a mausoleum -- polished, crowded, and sculpted atop the ashes of those they killed under the guise of progress.
Sometimes I imagine the stream still runs beneath us, whispering my name in its dark, narrow bed. I follow the sound when I can, but it always slips away, like water through my fingers that can no longer hold.
I wonder if I'll ever rest. I don't think so. Not while everything I love lies buried beneath a strip mall. And so I walk. Through streets that shine too brightly, through rooms filled with strangers who don't see the shadows. I linger in the empty spaces between what was and what is, waiting for someone to notice the chill in the air, the flicker in the lights, the faint echo of footsteps that don't belong -- or that they don't belong.
Until then, I wait. Not out of vengeance, but out of love too stubborn to die.
This place took everything from me. And still, I wait for home to find me again.