‘Curbed Curiosity’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Curbed Curiosity

I worked in Manhattan for one summer.
Every day during lunch,
I’d buy myself a hotdog from the corner,
Walk further down to where nobody was,
and I’d sit on the curb and eat.
Mouth full and hands full,
I’d stare at the building across the street.
White bricks, and a red door
with an OPEN sign on it.
Graffiti sat cloaked over the bricks as hundreds of people
walked passed it.
Sometimes, I would show up to the curb and the graffiti
would be gone. If I looked closely, I could still see it.
I guess over time, stuff like that never goes away.
Someone almost went in it once,
I was hoping they did.

It was the weirdest thing,
one Monday I sat on the curb
and the building was gone.
It took me a good 10 minutes to realize
that something wasn’t right with this picture.
I was bored, and I didn’t know why,
until I realized. My curiosity got the best of me
and I went back to the hotdog stand after
I proudly scarfed down two.
“Another one?”
“No thank you, I have a question. What happened
to that building across the street? They got rid of it? What was it?”

“Yea, they came on Saturday.” He said.
“It was some sort of museum. It's a shame,
nobody knew about it.”

Pasquale Gee is a 30 year old writer from Brooklyn New York. After posting his writing anonymously online, and it going viral, he decided to publish his first poetry book in 2022, and his second in 2023. Instagram : @pasqualegee_