Maroon Fade

The car sits quiet, burnt out and hollow,

maroon paint blistered, flaking slow like old wounds.

Sunset catches its cracked hood, a face

scarred, left to shrivel in the slow heat.

The smell—gasoline, burnt rubber, fading rot—

sticks to me long after the alley swallows it.

I think about the stories caught under peeling flakes,

life once bright now caked in dirt and silence,

rusting away without a sound.

I walk by, shoulders heavy with forgotten things,

something maroon staining the summer’s last breath,

the kind of loss that never shouts,

just seeps in through the pores,

dark and persistent.