Ruins

I rush I out of the building like
it’s falling down behind me
and it almost really kind of sort of is.
Another name checked off the endless
list of people in their places
for the day that I have signed so far away.
No one tries to keep me there
caught within the empty stare
of others like me on their own forever.
You’d think we’d finally have the sense
to take them on together
in our emptiness that they are so
obsessed with.

They are always desperate for the desperate
lurking in the shadows of their past mistakes
that they cannot erase with all their lives.
The only thing that ever dies are names
that can be handed down to save them if we wanted to.

The house leans like a person waiting
quietly against an alley wall, but there
is nothing else around that place at all.
From the the top window I climb out
to a portion of the roof and take my shoes
off and let them slide down past the tiles.
The birds could circle off for almost
twenty miles before they became too small
to take a picture of the way that you
would want to if you could.
That doesn’t always mean
a person should.