You ’ ve Been Dreaming About Streetlamps Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jin Cordaro

This wasn ’t right. She wasn ’t going in the fridge. She didn ’t belong there. Leaving the house, I carried the can tight under my arm, like a football. I walked across the street into the park, finding the path, the same path where Diana and I once walked together. Rocks crunched under my feet. The path twisted around a bend, rising slowly, then falling, then rising again. The last of the winter sun cut through the trees.

I came to the creek and a small bridge that kids always played on. Boys would guard it like soldiers, shooting imaginary guns at those who tried to cross. I once saw a bunch of girls sitting on the bridge holding candles, reading out of books, like they were witches casting a spell.

No kids were around now. They had disappeared into the trees and bushes, so I stood alone on the bridge. Opening the coffee can, I let the ashes drip out. Some were carried on the wind. Others floated

You’ve Been Dreaming about Streetlamps Again

By Jin Cordaro

Before the same strange house, many nights in a row. And a light begins to stir in your belly that says you were on this street before, but they called it by another name. It shows you the turned up stone where you once fell and your blood left a small horseshoe of a stain, and the hundreds of people who have lived in that house, and passed over the front walk so many times the stones became smooth. And from each of their bellies, there ’ s a burning, soft glow too, that calls to the light in your belly. Calls it by name. They discuss you, how those streetlamps are burning for you.

A Fish Needs a Tricycle by Julia Rix © 2013

into the creek’ s muddy water. “So long

Diana, ” I said.

It was time to let go. It was time to let it all go.

We never had another dog. We were never dog people anyway. Our daughter, God bless her, had wanted one, not us.

We never had another kid either. It was too much. After our daughter passed, we boxed up her toys and clothes and shoved them in the basement. But we couldn ’t get rid of the dog. She wasn ’t ours. She belonged to our daughter.

John Crawford was born and raised in Northeast Philadelphia, where this story is set. He now lives in Waltham, Mass., with his wife and daughter. He is the senior editor of the Babson Magazine, the alumni publication of Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. He still visits Philly often and jogs around Pennypack Park whenever he can.