Lovely Lost Things

   It sprawled there, ravaged by neglect, grayed wood, crackling paint of a a shade that might once have been near white clinging only where the mold held it in place, blank square eyes looking out at the uncaring avenue. Here a bit of ornamental trim, there the broken teeth of a shattered rail showed that it had once been loved. Now it was only another blank spot in a dying city.
   Passersby never looked directly at it. Motorist that found themselves waiting at the adjacent stop sign felt uncomfortably impatient. Every window had been broken, and wire striped, but these things had been done in a perfunctory haste. Urine pasted a single room on ground level rooms, a handful of beer cans, and a single rusty tipped needle lay on the floor nearby. A careful observer would have noticed that the local strays never came near the place, but there was none to paused and look.
   When the moon was out, and in that lost city its light was the only light on the street, and no living soul was about, the dust would stir, and whorl down hallways, and through empty rooms. Windless sighs, creaking that would pass ever up the broken staircase, and along the upstairs balcony sounded then, but no one ever noticed the ghosts that crowed that city of the dead.