Alone.

The assembly lines stand abandoned.
.     Support stations silenced.

The floor is covered in bleak layers of ash.

The unbroken quiet, broken by drips of quickening sorrow.

This place was once full of sighs and hand-me-downs
.    Now even they’re all gone.

The walls still show signs of attendance.
Yet, no manner of violent remonstration,
.     rage or fomented frustration,
can remove the grey from this calloused remembrance.

.     Even if their inhabitants failed to provide subsistence
This ground held promise.
.     Now that’s all spent-slash-squandered.

The leftovers were nothing; nothing worth noting.

Like scattered mines,
.     Each empty barrel and bin are filled with charges of antecedent chagrins;
Shadows of a generation that never gave thought to the world of tomorrow.

Upwards the frame is shattered, its roof left mangled;
.      bright orange lines of rust stains run down what’s left of each pillar.
Tear-shaped lines of yesteryear move even the most thoughtless of listeners.

Then rising unnoticed, begins the slow ascent of the impossible and the peculiar.

Engravings marked by an outward light,
.             pierce through the silted darkness.

Then hands reach down and dust off,
.           grace-breathed Petroglyphs of the once familiar.

.

(©RL2016)