Ghost towns.  All that remains of the places when you were in love.
The fountain, the colonnade, short sandy bit of beach between rocky coves.
You’ve been there since and it’s quiet, you think.  You think to yourself, was it always this way?
You step on memories like sunlight breaking through trees, you can smell them on the wind, caught, no, gone again.
The past is a ghost town.
City built for the future, but everyone moved on.
No forwarding address.
We all have them inside of us and we visit often.
Always shocked by the endless silence, chattering somewhere too far to make out.
They moved on and you woke and looked out upon empty streets and bare shelves.
You’ll have to leave too one day.
You can wake up, day after day, and tell yourself it is then, but then is gone, there is only tomorrow.
Tomorrow is the only address you’ll ever have.
Today has already happened, it is already over.
Your whole life, stretched out like a deck of cards.
It is already over, the chemical processes playing catch-up, telling us the fact the world already knows.
Only the world knows what time it is, the rest of us are always late.
Two steps behind on our best day.

© 2011 James L. Carey