City of Ghosts

“50,000 people used to live here. Now it’s a Ghost Town.” _{(Pripiyat, Ukraine. Credit: Jorge Franganillo)}

Originally written January 27th, 2023, inspired by Pink Floyd’s “Marooned.”

The decades have not been kind to this place.
Nature reclaims what man has abandoned,
As if this vacancy didn’t already prove nature’s superiority.
As if man didn’t force their own exodus
By fumbling in the dark with unfathomable powers
That sit well beyond their petty attempts at control.

Balconies where nobody hangs clothes to dry or shares gossip.
Ferris wheel that will never play host to young lovers kissing at the top.
A pool with cracked tiles that will never know swimmers again.
Echoes of laughter from years ago.

Peeling paint in schools where no children learn.
Lost toys turned monuments to children forced to grow up too fast.
Books that shall never be read covering floors.
Remnants of an old sketch long forgotten under dust and solemnity.

Wild, untamed forests take over parks where nobody walks.
Faded murals in a building whose purpose has been lost.
Rusting, antiquated iconography.
Shattered glass carpets covered with collected snow.

Fading light illuminating faded places.
After the nightfall, there will be no artificial stars
To light rotting roadways and tattered meeting places.
Only the cold light of a distant moon.

Fragments of lives who once mattered here.

This city died when it was under an older flag. 
When lines on the map moved and shifted,
Its sisters entered the new world gracefully,
But this one will remain a cold and silent monument,
The last city of a dead nation.