Weirton, WV

Hastily painted in black,
the sign read:
‘NO ONE HOME!’
Surely a given-
this ramshackle cottage was barely standing;
the door had kicked off at least five years of dust when I knocked.

As I turned to leave,
my eye caught another sentence
of tiny letters,
scrawled in pencil
below the larger exclamation:
‘BUT GOSH WE HAD SOME FUN IN HERE.
JUST GOT TOO SAD TO STAY’
Ran my finger along the letters a moment..
Damn it, they were right
Sometimes, better to hold to memories
Than cling to a now that's just fading away
And so, with that-
I kissed goodbye to the old mill town

Ezy Reading is out every month.