Property of Someone Else Now

Two years I'd cut through that lot—

not a path exactly, just the gap

between the loading dock and the dumpsters,

the gravel, the yellow painted line

for a zone nobody used.

This morning: wood.

Pale pressure-treated lumber

across the full width,

still smelling of whatever they treat it with.

A gap at the bottom

where something had already dug.

A dog, probably.

Or just the ground doing what ground does.

No sign. No notice.

Just the fact of it, at eight forty-three,

when I was already running late

and the cold had gotten specific—

the kind that comes through the collar,

that finds the back of the neck.

I stood in front of it

for a moment.

Seven minutes to go around the block.

I checked.

I stood there before I checked.

The way you stand in front of something

that has simply closed—

that has no record of your two years,

that is just:

new, solid, done.

I was angrier than I needed to be.

I went around.