Sacrifice Zone: Eastwick

I’m standing in a patch of grass, looking across four lanes of traffic at a Kia dealership whose windows read CASH FOR CLUNKERS, and whose speakers play a voice droning “Sales line one, sales line one” loud enough for me to hear over the roar of the semitrucks and planes passing overhead. This patch of grass is in Eastwick, the southwesternmost neighborhood of Philadelphia, and the one next to mine. I’m the only person walking for a mile, so drivers turn and stare as I approach a telephone pole with prayer candles scattered around its base and a teddy bear tied to it with cord. It bears a piece of blue posterboard with the words LONG LIVE STRAWS WE LOVE YOU, GOD LOVED YOU MORE HE COULDN’T WAIT written in black Sharpie. There is an opening in the cluster of trees that separates where I stand from the Schuylkill River Tank Farm, where people have dumped tires, plastic bottles, and an old silver-and-black TV.