El Meu Carrer

My Street

My street is dark and twisted, it tastes like the port and has the name of a poet. Narrow and dirty, it smells of people and has balconies full of hanging clothes. My street is worth nothing: a hundred broken doorways and a fountain where children and cats, pigeons and dogs come to drink. It's a corner where the sun never enters, just an ordinary street. My street has five streetlights so the kids can throw rocks. There's a boarding house and three bakeries, and a bar on every corner. My street is people from everywhere who work and drink, who sweat and eat, and wake up with the first sun, and go to soccer every Sunday, or play marbles on the sidewalk, or play dominoes with wine. My street is a child who eats bread with oil and sugar, and plays dice and 'strong horse', half good, half naughty schoolboy and rascal. My street in the lower neighborhood lives in the drawer of the dressers, with coins, and the 'Nestle' album and pieces of an old stove. And little by little, my street is falling apart.