You were my favorite ghost town.
For reasons unknown to me,
I found myself less lonely
At the expense of these visits.
The sun was always bright,
Yet the air was always brisk-
A breeze of warm nostalgia
And chilling melancholy.
Yet, somehow, this cool wind
Would welcome me,
Hold me and hug every part of my body
That was aching to only feel again.
Maybe it is remembrance
That is more fulfilling
Than any final words
Or peek at the future.
Maybe the light of hope
Isn’t really a light at all,
But the only way to get us
To close our eyes- and see.
I found a single empty building
In these abandoned grounds,
Filled with made-beds
And beams of sunlight.
I’d dance in the hallways,
Filling my lungs
With miles and miles of dust
Left behind from a life that once was.
If I’d shut my eyes hard enough,
And listen closely enough,
My footsteps began to sound like yours,
Dancing beside me, as if you never had left.
I memorized this skeleton of bricks-
Every secret room and crooked picture frame,
Every piece of broken furniture and molded corner,
Every decaying streak of paint.
I made this place my home
Because it’s all that I knew,
And I thought that was enough for me,
And enough to feel like you were here again.
I thought maybe, just maybe,
There was another soul roaming around
That I could help keep company.
Maybe that’s all ghosts really want.
Until I realized that I was the only ghost
Haunting these grounds,
Stuck in an in-between
Of the real and imagined.
I made a home out of an empty space,
And became a fool who wondered
Why you’d never visit
When every door was open.
So I packed my bags,
Leaving behind every dream and inch of hope,
Knowing that these were far too heavy
To bring back with me.
I left the doors open for an eternity,
Wishing you’d come in,
Yet locked them on myself,
Trapping myself in a delusion.
I cannot say I no longer visit this ghost town,
But the stops are much less frequent,
And I leave before I become too exhausted
And am forced to crawl into one of those empty beds again.
I found that driving by
In lanes of memory
Is much better for me
Than living in a lifeless space.
Nothing can be permanent,
And every world must end at some point,
But that does not mean
New ones cannot begin.
I often wonder
If you have found this ghost town yourself,
And if you ever discovered the traces and clues
I left behind for you so lovingly.
They are still there if you search hard enough,
But I can no longer torture myself with the idea
That I mean absolutely nothing
To someone who was everything to me.
blindednights 