NEIGHBORS 3

And...they are gone.

Didn't see them arrive, never saw them go. That is quite an accomplishment, because I am here almost all the time. I suspect it was in the middle of the night, that night I heard a gunning car engine in the alley. What happened to all your stuff? Is it still there? 'Cause you guys are gone, and you are not coming back.

The cops came sniffing around your place, twice that I saw in the month or so you lived here. Always two, with two cars. They smiled at me as I drove past them on my way out the driveway. I didn't ask what was going on, but something was, huh?

My daughter said your kids shouted over the fence that they had to move again because the house wasn't big enough. How many times have you told them this, or some other lie? How many times have you shuttled them to a car, sleepy and confused in the dead of night, to another dump of a place where they sleep on the floor on dirty blankets? How many times did you tell them Jesus will provide, but neglected to tell them just how Jesus provides?

I am not sorry you are gone. It is one less worry for me. That won't stop me from thinking every so often, for years, about the inevitable change that will happen in the faces of your children.