Mechanicsville, Capitol View, West End: The Cousins

Lyrics

Standing on the Lee Street platform.
6:42 in the morning.
The air is cool.
You can feel the whole city waking up around you.
But it's not one city.
It's a family of names.

North of here, that's Mechanicsville.
The older brother.
Hands still smelling of steel and oil.
The Pullman porters’ ghosts still walk those streets.
I see them in the front door of 482 West Whitehall, facing the morning sun.
A straight shot from their porch to the rail yard.
Their wives' names never on the deeds.

We are not just Adair Park.
We are the cousins who share a yard.
Mechanicsville, with its railroad spine.
Pittsburgh, with its memory of smoke.
West End, the elder at the table.
Capitol View, watching from the ridge.
We draw our breath from the same air.

And to the east, that's Pittsburgh.
Named for a sky that isn't here anymore.
I saw it on a Sanborn map from 1911.
A single mule barn, holding on at the edge of the rail cut.
A stubborn piece of memory.
We share a bus stop and a history of soot carried on the wind.

We are not just Adair Park.
We are the cousins who share a yard.
Mechanicsville, with its railroad spine.
Pittsburgh, with its memory of smoke.
West End, the elder at the table.
Capitol View, watching from the ridge.
We draw our breath from the same air.

The number 71 bus knows the route by heart.
It stitches us together, a slow, rumbling needle.
The map shows a hard line, but the kids walk across it for school.
The grandmothers borrow sugar across it.
West End holds the oldest stories.
Capitol View sees the weather coming first.
We are a quilt of front porches facing each other across invisible lines.

The train pulls away.
West End.
Capitol View.
Mechanicsville.
Pittsburgh.
A family of names, spoken under your breath.
A quiet map, held in the heart.