Poetry [ongoing]

kenopsia (free verse)

[I wrote this the day I returned to my school to take a standardized test, the first extended time I'd spent in our school building since we went remote almost a year before. January 26, 2021]

kenopsia

A time capsule, sealed on March 11, 2020,

and locked until further notice.

Until the doors swing open

for someone to observe what was left behind.

A poster that clings to the wall by a strip of tape,

pleading for its viewers to join it

at the trivia night dated a year ago.

Desks, scattered across the room,

one still sporting the heart-shaped tattoo

a love-struck seventh grader etched there.

A lonely drinking fountain

whose red light still begs for a new filter,

with the same lump of gum lodged in the drain.

The hall pass hanging on a hook

outside the bathroom door,

where someone always forgets it.

A rack of coats, textbooks, pencil cases,

lying as they have for months,

lost, but not yet found.

At first glance, it seems abandoned,

a forgotten place,

without life, without a past or a future.

But look closer, and you will see

our marks, little traces of ourselves

that whisper, We were here.