Six Blocks

By Anush Ter-Khachatryan 

Six blocks from Aram Street
where poets die
people decide to live
swallowing anger in their lungs
raging against the maledictions of pain.
Six blocks from where life seems like a board game
where cheap wine and expensive odors encompass boredom.
Six blocks from sweat-faded streets
from Middle Eastern restaurants and Irish pubs
from Pits Stop and Sisyphusian hills.

Here people can live without ever trying avocados
peeling their years like peach skin.
Here is where sounds appear in clarity
where all the errors and prophecies revisit
in awkwardness,
in persistence —
as an extinguished friend.
Here the illusions are exiled
here is where life is hard and makes sense
where stories are not stolen
where I stand and watch myself descending
from six blocks away.