Fondest Memory

The girl was young and full of synthetic sugars.

She walked by pale in the Spring day sun
after a long night of sitting on gravestones.

Meeting her friends with black eyeliner
in the depths of the public park
after the streetlamps went dark.

Each with a sad compulsion.
Each with a cloud companion of loneliness.

Their little clouds hovering above them as they moved
about the town.

We could see them drifting like bruises by the creek,
smoking cigarettes together in their private storms,
drizzling onto the water's edge, onto stones...

Or over in the plaza
under the town's statue of heroism.

The tall soldier looking resolute into the past symbolizing nothing.

Nothing but the town, just a place
where rain clouds gather.

And a few memories about sadness.

When rain washed mascara down cheeks
and the waters rose.

When the creek in the night wouldn't stop
and rose and kept on rising.

And so many little twigs were set loose from branches.
And so many twigs were set spinning over black currents.

This was the closest to home they felt
when the Earth was lost.

This was their fondest memory of how they lost.