This is where I used to live on University avenue in Berkeley, until I turned thirteen and moved to El Cerrito. Back then, Bel Air motel was blue. It is now called Erna Harris court and is some type of gated HUD development. Next door, there was a liquor store called Jay-Vee liquors, and a fotomat in the parking lot. And next to that, was Santa Fe restaurant. These places were there for years and years.

Now, Jay-Vee's has closed down and the site was converted into a synagogue. And Santa Fe restaurant is now a pre-school.

I was in the Tenderloin yesterday on the way to SF public library---and I ran into someone from my past, who I haven't seen in about sixteen years.

" Your name begins with an A, don't it?" she asked me, pushing her stroller.

Lately, I've been thinking, I wouldn't mind visiting the halls of my past, and tracing the walls of rooms where I was, and listening to the voices---especially with the fact my godmother and namesake is sick now. Yesterday, in the sweltering heat, as I made it to the steps of the San Francisco public library, where the security guard was smoking a cigarette, there was a glimmer of a true moment where I wanted to close the past in a trunk and shut it tight.