Going Down the Memory Lane

Standing at a place I used to call "home".

Our old neighborhood, or what's left of it.

Though my parents and brother had told me our old house and the neighborhood were gone, the idea of "gone" didn't sink in till I revisited the place and stood on where our house used to be. After the houses were torn down and wiped out, wild grass had reclaimed the whole area. The whole place now reminds me the PBS series "The World Without Us".

There were a few houses still standing. With their windows stripped and everything gone, they were modern ruins. I sneaked in to one of them and had the feeling that I was in a war zone. Right at this moment I heard some explosions outside, it sounded like bombs were falling. Is it my imagination? I went out, and saw far away people were shooting New Year fireworks (the heavy duty one). They shot into the sky, and looked just like the missile footages on TV.  

Our back yard was like this when I grew up, a paradise now forever lost. 

I used to walk this barely recognizable road to school every day.