Repost

The multicolored balloons have lost all of their helium and are now waving limply in the breeze, shriveled and forgotten. Their colors, which once were bright and hopeful are now blackened, mere remnants of their former beauty. They are still tied to the bricks on the floor, as if they had enough life left in them to float away, though they are going nowhere. The carnival is long forgotten.

Empty cups strewn about the floor are the only proof of the men that were there recently. The Styrofoam gargoyles are menacingly lifeless, still wet inside. The inebriation has also been forgotten.

A rusty flagpole forlornly stands to the side of a splintered table. Weeds left to grow have covered its proud foundation. It bears no flag. The rope’s lock clangs jarringly, irrythmically, cringingly. The ringing is dull, damped, and makes me wonder what happened to the clear ringing of freedom, for it no longer inhabits this place.

Passers by do not stop and consider what this place is. They do not understand what it once was, and don’t care what it could be.

It is shattered asphalt, twisted iron, broken glass. It is forgotten stories and misdirected dreams. It is where all beginnings end. It is what we have done to ourselves.


Fall, 2003

All work copyright 2003 LMH.