Peeling Back Pyrite

Papa,

I see the weight that draws down their eyes

and casts pools of shadows around their feet.

I watch them sink into the ground from which they'd once been lifted

with clusters of glass bottles gripped in their fists

So tightly.

Their walls fall down together,

caving in on one another,

folding into tents of limp limbs destined, like all great empires, to collapse.

And the pain comes in the crumbling—

discotheque lights,

the illusion of a good time,

cigarettes on the tile

in a house so filled with                      

                                        smoke

and melting people

seeping into the                              

                               basement

that you too become blind.

And you wonder what it was that brought so many souls into the same place to cry

How living behind a shimmering glass could taint so many lives.

-A Daughter Of Lost Friends