Meandering

Faded and tattered, the Puerto Rican flags strung from window to window flap in the wind, baring through each shred the blues of early morning. Passing under them on our way to the administrative offices, my supervisor and I acknowledge silently their haunting presence, as if their wraithlike bodies kept watch over a community similarly out of time and place.

As we make our way beyond this street, my supervisor stops to greet clients from the clinic on the street, which surprises me since confidentiality is so important at the clinic. For me it is a new kind of community outreach, one that goes beyond the walls of any institution and spills out onto where people shop, eat, and live. Casually checking in on clients, we stop and go in an unhurried rhythm until we reach the offices, but by then, I realize that the promenade was not intended to reach any particular destination but rather to reach out to clients that we hadn’t seen in a long time. On our way back, we take a different route, but in my mind I still see those rent flags from the other street and wonder if they solemnly still cling to the line that keeps them in place.