We’re almost a ghost town.
There’s a chair on the side of the main road,
and glass shattered all over the ground.
The post office is boarded up,
and there’s nobody around.
There’s graffiti on the elementary school,
I wish you’d at least been cruel.
But we faded out like high-school football stars, neon-lit bars, and lightning bugs.
The love decayed over time like teeth do with drugs.
–S.
When I first started venturing out into ghost towns, I was fascinated with the idea of being alone in a town.
I was trying to escape myself after a bad break-up.
I was disappearing without actually disappearing.
I felt gone like the people who left these places for various reasons.
I was looking for something that I didn’t know I needed, until I found it.
I imagined the ghosts of people long gone, loving and laughing on these forgotten grounds.
I fell in love with the personality of rusty, beat-up cars and houses with caved in foundations.
I fell in love with the way the breeze caressed my face differently than in the city.
I fell in love with the song of birds and insects.
I fell in love with the melody of swaying grass.
The structures reminded me of myself.
Abandoned, but standing.
Falling, but somehow still sturdy.
–S.
The Messy Middle 🖤 