One bench like many others

This was somewhere to be. (340 words.)

There was a bench.
For many passersby,
It was one like many others,
and its memory faded away,
it bore no significance,
on their uneventful days.

On this bench sat two lovers,
whose heartbeats
had ceased to synchronize,
and all that remained,
was a deafening silence,
tears for two eyes,
and guilt for the other's mind.

Another day,
lying on the bench,
was a homeless man,
Freezing and indifferent hellish screeches,
wasting him into a fetal position,
with two coins sitting idly in his cup.
He clenched on a tissue adorned with the initials,
of a mother who had long mourned his lost boy.

In the dark winter night, he let out a last gasp,
with the hope he'll find her back,
in another life.

One morning,
A young woman sat on the bench,
bottling a mix of joy and apprehension.
She had received a life-changing letter,
for a new life away from gloomy ruins and sorrows.
Thoughts tormented her,
of the new bright horizons beyond her hometown,
and of the younger brother she couldn't abandon.
There she remained for two hours,
thinking about the younger sibling,
left alone to the wolves at home.

In a distant future,
there would be a box hidden in an old desk,
buried under a lifetime of clutter,
holding what few traces she will find,
of the specters and decaying traces
of her disappeared brother.
Her grandchildren will mindlessly throw it away.

In front of an overworked employee of the town,
sat a pile of paperwork waiting to be signed.
Among them was one that would seal the fate of the bench and its park,
sold to private interests and promises of immediate profits.

There, a place where life blossomed and died,
where hearts broke apart,
where invisible tragedies met quiet ends,
and where destinies were forever changed,
was put to an end with the single strike of a digger,
the machinery's monstrous roars drowning out the pleas and cries
of the longtime locals who had left their memories there.

The Backrooms

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