rusting metal windowpanes…brick-face dingy with black dust and decay…entry doors open to the rain…the roof sagging with the weight of fifty years…wishbone trees growing out of the second and third floor classrooms, like old children reaching now-tired arms toward the threatening sky…the blocky building, like a cold shell discarded after metamorphosis…so sad, so troubling, so much like a generation lost in their own neglect, their own brokenness, their own rusting lives…
and i ponder their mascara-stained faces as i stand in the parking lot taking photos, capturing time and space within a box…and ageless tears…before i discover they are mine, splashing from my face in the stiff pollen-filled wind.
there is a sea in the wind, and it has washed over this place, leaving debris between the white lines. the fields are raging, and waves of weeds blow and ebb, and i am tossed ashore, washed up against…closer and closer to the edge….to the edge of myself.
and i toss and turn
and i toss and turn
so i tuck in my camera, away from the light, and walk past the edge…into the arms of the present…into the arms of the possible…and reject the rain…
and it may toss, but i will not turn
i will not run
for the world is waiting
the love inside
