It's tough to write beautifully about ugly things, but Mitchell S. Jackson makes it look easy.

For as long as I could remember, the person in E23 pasted the same Halloween decoration, a witch with a giant wart on her crone's nose, but whenever kids rang, the tenant wouldn't answer. At first, kids figured they'd just missed the guy: bad timing. But it seemed impossible that all of us missed him every year.

Since Queens is the most ethnically diverse plot of land on Earth, we had tenants from all over the globe. The whole world in one building.

Victor LaValle Quotes