Artifacts
Shoes
scuff
asphalt,
pitching down,
arms brace for the fall,
fingers wrestle with torn pages,
kneeling to collect the sooty gravel of past years,
scraping up a handful of the scattered fibers and the tarnishing scrapbook photos.
Chalk
dust
settles
over desks,
emptied classroom aisles,
echoes of children on the swings,
features drift away behind the myths of decades passed,
leaving the recent dead in the shadows of a silent and forgotten recess yard.
