I enter the house just off the road,
mostly hidden from the view of passers-by.
Resting on land reclaimed by nature,
abandoned, but still holding memories.
Rotting floor littered with boxes,
scattered contents, the pieces of a lost story.
Glimpses of joy, hints of sorrow.
School work marked with solid grades.
Toils of a child who attended the same school as mine.
A sketch book with pages left blank
I wonder if the child’s dream was also abandoned.
Photographs and scribbled notes,
a calendar filled with plans long forgotten,
reminders of cherished times
and documents telling of fears and trials.
I would say they left in a hurry.
Maybe there had been plans to return,
perhaps, they had nowhere else to go.
Their home now lost and consumed by time,
with roof collapsed, and walls caved in.
On land that beckoned to developers
who cared not for what once had been.
I stood silently, reverently
amongst lingering impressions of the living.
They hold me tight as a parent once did.
The child who dreamed that things could be better.
I hear the faintest words of arguments and loving expressions
in the gentle stirring of the summer breeze.
I say a prayer for those who were here
and that which they left behind
encroached upon by the finality of physical decay.
Like those who lived here before, I will never return,
though their spiritual traces will always remain.
