I have walked these streets my whole life, I know them just the same as if they were etched in my head with a sharp knife, scored in deep like some strange work of art. These are the streets I grew up on and for the most part I'm calm here, at home, on the down low with a steady heart beat. Not tonight though. Tonight my heart wants out of my chest. It wants to beat free of its cage. It pounds like it's going to crack a rib. My senses are on high alert. Every colour is brighter, every noise louder, every stranger a cause to make my heart beat more fiercely still. It's been like that since the bikers came to town, marking out their turf like a wolf pack. I don't even deal drugs but they mean to dominate everyone regardless. They've got Kenny dealing for them already, there goes his grades, there goes his life. So now the streets that were my salvation spike my adrenaline as good as a shot to the arm.
I cut my teeth on these streets, literally and metaphorically. I was born a block over on Turner Street in a little run down house with a slate roof; not that that tells you much. All the houses down there are like that. It's the kind of street you need to start sticking up for yourself early on or else loose everything you have and go home crying to your mama. These roads and tin-pot stores that never update their awnings are a time-warp. All I need now is a choc-ice, a yo-yo and a baseball cap and I'll be eleven again. The swings are just the same, just way more beat up. On closer inspection the paint that remains is the exact some shade I recall and the tarmac is even more broken up by weeds that just won't quit. I kick at then with the toe of my shoe. I think that's what we all were , us kids that made it in the city, "weeds that just wouldn't quit."