[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.