Druid Hills, Emory Village, North Decatur: The Neighbors

Lyrics

You can’t choose your family. 
You just... are. 
A map of kinship drawn by a creek bed and a bus route.
To the west, the older cousin, Druid Hills.
Born from Joel Hurt’s money and a plan from 1893.
Frederick Law Olmsted drew those curves like cursive script.
Old trees, deep lawns, a quiet you have to afford.
They look at our straight streets, our little brick ranches, and see something... simpler.
Something after the war.
But the South Fork of Peachtree Creek doesn't see the property lines. 
It just runs. 
Under the North Decatur culvert, under their Olmsted bridges.
And the number 6 MARTA bus sighs at the same stops for all of us.
We are an orbit. A constellation held by the gravity of the hospital, the university.
To the south, the kid sister, Emory Village.
Always buzzing with coffee and borrowed textbooks.
I stand in the Starbucks parking lot and think about the ghost train.
The electric streetcar spur from the 1893 plan that never arrived.
A different kind of connection that died on paper.
So they drive instead.
Or walk, if they live close enough.
But the South Fork of Peachtree Creek doesn't see the property lines. 
It just runs. 
Under the North Decatur culvert, under their Olmsted bridges.
And the number 6 MARTA bus sighs at the same stops for all of us.
We are an orbit. A constellation held by the gravity of the hospital, the university.
And to the east, North Decatur. The practical one. The crossroads.
Late afternoon at the Square, transferring buses.
The air smells of wet sycamore leaves and diesel exhaust from the idling 6.
We all pass through here. 
On the way to somewhere else, or on the way home.
We are Toco Hills. 
We have our own lines. 
A fishing wire twelve miles long that makes a room of our streets. 
But we hear the family next door. 
The sirens on Clifton, the students on Decatur Road, the quiet money breathing in the trees just west of us.
You can't choose your family. 
You are just... here. 
Together.