Cracks by Jordan Boersma

Everything was perfectly intact until the walls cracked.
This was all so intricately designed;
careful thought given to every angle,
to every recess,
to every texture.
The way the light filtered through every pane
was so warm and whimsical;
and it waltzed with the waning sun.
But the flies swarmed,
and spiders followed,
and their webs went undeterred.
Tiny feet marched,
and teeth tore,
and the insulation was strewn about.
And the cold and dry,
the hot and wet,
and the endlessly expanding cracks.
Every corner feels the draft;
every shelf empty but for the dust.
The faucets stopped dripping some time ago,
and the life they gave desiccated.
Skeletons litter the marble floor,
legs reaching toward vaulted ceilings,
never to reach them.
There was knocking at the doors,
and peering in the windows.
Whispers found authoritative ears,
and boards were hammered across the doors.
Whether to keep in, or keep out,
proving proficient in neither.
Kids crept about on dares, hands grasping
and rats scurried, paws pillaging,
tiny voices echoing in darkness,
feet crunching on fallen armies of invaders past.
Everything they valued taken,
consumed,
or sold.
But the cracks remember each passage,
and they know what remains.