Empty Seats at Sundown

The park was quiet, the day was done,

streetlights blinked their yellow eye.

I walked past where the children run,

beneath a fading, bruised-up sky.

The swingset stood, a lonely frame,

two empty seats, they gently swayed.

No voices calling out a name,

no games of brave or unafraid.

The chains caught light, a dull, soft gleam,

a kind of gold that's almost gone.

They made a quiet, rusty dream,

a metallic sigh into the dawn

of coming night. I heard the creak,

a sound like memory, worn and slow.

The kind of truth you cannot speak,

of places where you used to go.

And standing there, the wind so thin,

I saw myself, a smaller size.

The joy I held, the world within,

reflected in those empty skies.

Just me, the quiet, and the sway,

a story nobody would tell.

Another childhood gone astray,

another moment, fading well.