The Metro Link is an emblem of progress in this economically depressed city, yet its tracks are lined with what’s been left behind: acres of bristling weeds, spindly clusters of daisies, chicory, cattails, Queen Anne’s lace, old mattresses flung by the side of the tracks…There are heaps of rusted industrial junk, made almost cheerful by bright graffiti, whose secret alphabet is a code of the future, scrawled over the past.

I depart from Delmar Station nearly every day, rolling past blocks of disused factories, window glass greened and sepia’d with time, shot through with bullet holes, riddled with bird shit. I wonder what these factories once made?

Then there’s Wellston Station; then a blur of prairie scrub, abrasive and resilient. In the tall grass I see stacks of old railroad ties, box cars, and even a pink Winnebago, retired from its glory days of cross-country adventure. But how in the hell did it wind up here?

The train shoots up to Rock Road Station. There is a wide expanse of parking lot; and a massive flea market, an emporium of the rejected. But suddenly the eye is shocked by acres of Johnnies-on-the-Spot, an army of pissoirs awaiting orders. They’re huddled together in bright candy colors that look so optimistic somehow-cherry and grape and lemon and lime-some designer must have wanted these crappers to look fun-but why?

Mesmerized by such mysteries, I realize I have missed my stop. I hop back on the next platform and take the next train heading south. Not far from that beached Winnebago, on the left side of the tracks, is St. Peter’s Cemetery, while on the right is a car graveyard.

On the right, the tombstones are scattered through the meadow. The grass is very tall and it is hard to imagine when anyone live might have been here last. There are no flowers here at any time of year. The edges of the stones have been worn down by the weather. They look like old teeth, rotten and gray.

But the car graveyard does not share this gloom. There, the crunched cars are blindingly bright in the sun. They are stacked in columns, dozens high, in all the faddish colors of the seventies-rust-orange, aubergine, shit-brown-so much more vibrant than the resting place of bones.

This is the tour of the unwanted. It is so pleasant to watch it all go by at eighty miles an hour; this ride is so drowsy, so relaxing in the sun. I see the beautiful demise of this city, my city. See how peaceful it can be, to be left behind.