Last night on our way to dinner at the local soojaebee restaurant, walking the same sidewalk we’ve walked for two years, we passed one of the trees on the sidewalk from whose vicinity originates the most repugnant odor. I’m serious. I’ve been noticing it for months. When I first smelled it and looked down in the circular section of dirt left for the tree amidst the encroaching pavement, I saw a pile of red liquid that looked like blood and which I thought at the time was blood that someone had vomited there. But it was always there, every time I passed and for a little while I thought it was some kind of popular vomiting location, but later I also saw trash bags piled there and thought it must just be some kind of super-toxic trash. Thing is, once the trash bags are gone, pools of liquid remain, oozing beyond the boundaries of the confined dirt, sometimes dried in far-reaching splash lines extending out 2 or 3 feet into the street and onto the sidewalk. The small patch of dirt always contains a viscous puddle, which upon seeing causes my head to roll back checking for life in the limbs of the tree, which there appears to be; and I wonder how the tree can find sustenance in what must surely be toxic waste.