A Drive Through Altadena

January 2025, Pasadena

I encouraged him to drive through Altadena after we went to the bar because he wanted to and felt bad about the wanting, about going out of the way to look. I am paid to take this kind of accountability.

As we crossed into burnland, color evaporated. He wondered why there weren’t more army tanks. I said there was nothing left to protect.

Sporadically a house sat untouched, which was worse. Where are your friends? Where are your parents?

All sound had been sucked from the air, the kind of quiet that only exists in black and white photographs. The kind of quiet that has a scream locked inside.

I said we should turn around before we bring a ghost back with us, a thing I worry about when touring haunted places.

Returning to the world of light and action was like stepping into Oz after the sepia tones of Kansas.

Back on his couch we watched Seinfeld, ate brie on crackers, and had polite sex before bed. Our usual routine, except when it was time to sleep, I couldn’t.

Instead I lay in his custom sized bed while images of chimneys standing in rubble and soot stained slabs of wall streamed behind my eyelids, thinking about Altadena’s origins as a redline neighborhood, its rich history of Black home ownership and other disappeared silver linings.

He slept seamlessly until the sun rose and it was time to take me home.

I am paid to take this kind of accountability.

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