Old School

An empty room: bare and harsh
with yellow, buckled floorboards
worn by years of aimless use
by boys and girls no longer there;
ghosts in the afternoon
of this half-remembered day
who present yet (in one sense)
will not be brought again to stand in line.

The walls are yellow too: pale,
constructed of the cheapest chipboard
scuffed by careless, long-gone hands,
pockmarked by pins and tacks; a nail
which, once upon a time, held up
a version of this world arranged
in subtle pink upon whose power
the sun was meant to never set.

A four-square window frame: aged,
white paint, cracked and peeling;
flakes curled in the summer's sun
like rose petals at a birth or death.

Light fills the vacant space: brilliant,
a stark illumination that serves less
the fondest memories of old men fading
than sears into the brain all that they've lost.
.