Atrophy

Thirty years since the last live-ins left. Nothing now. The rude geometry of what remains shrouded by decades-long encroach of forest. No unshattered windows. Broken-down houses leaking candyfloss clouds of insulation. Weeds puddled in pavement cracks. Like the years-distant aftermath of a hurricane; more ruins than remnants. Beautiful here: a single vast hall caving slowly in, muralled walls flaking, dented barrels piled in undergrowth, birds nesting in bedrooms, broken porcelain, skeleton of a playground swingset, bedframes pyred and rusting in years and years and years of rain, a brick wishing well choked with crawlers, a swimming pool with reeds, electrical wiring dropped like a giant's pubic hair, lampposts greened with oxidate, old walls shaggy with moss, a single intact mirror, a blind and dying rabbit, tagged walls, a rotting concrete pier, a flattened fence, a stretch of beach long-undisturbed by children.

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