“If you’re not careful / you’ll up believing this is the world.”
— Antonio Cisneros, The Spider Hangs Too Far from the Ground
I grew up in southwest Denver.
Late in the day, as the sun settled toward the mountains west of the city, I loved to see downtown Denver highlighted in the evening light. My favorite version of this view happened after a summer thunderstorm. The crenellated, steely-gray and white skyline glowed with hope against the dark-purple clouds that had taken their wrath out to the plains.
When I was twelve years old, my friend’s mother invited us to volunteer with her at her job. We drove there on a cold December morning. We rode in the back of a pickup truck, lying down as flat as we could to stay out of the bitter wind. When we arrived, I sat up.
And the world shifted.
My skyline, the familiar arrangement of glass and steel, had been put into a cloth bag, shaken, and poured out. This was not my downtown. We were northeast of the city center, directly opposite of where I’d grown up. The buildings were foreign, strange, and discomfiting. Not at all the view I knew and trusted.
But then another thought hit me. There were children who grew up in this neighborhood. These alien buildings that discomfited me were their…
