Confluence

Where the old mall was recently torn down, inside the demolition zone that is surrounded by a great circle of fence, there are two long concrete troughs on either side of stairs that lead down to what was one of the mall's entrances: the eastern end that led out to a main alley and across it to the town's open square.

The mall was slowly destroyed, and then no more mall was there but rubble heaps; and then the rubble was taken away. The fence still stood.

Taking the place of the rubbish heaps then were heaps of the great concrete pad that was broken up on which the mall was founded. While the concrete heaps were standing, and the fence still standing around them, out of the concrete troughs that seemed to have been forgotten, on either side of what was an entrance to the mall, daffodils bloomed, like they had year after year: just inside the zoning fence, the yellow bouncing heads, but no mall there anymore.