I am a building with boarded windows
Where phantoms whisper behind broken blinds
Bound to a place of such potential
Once beautiful at another time

Today my paint is chipping
Black eyes gaping hopes
I am the place you once called home
Shattered glass and crumbling stones

No vagrants loiter here
Out of pity? Out of fear?
Perhaps a reverence for my history
Life that once warmed the walls within me

I am the soot-stained rotting boards
The rats the rest beneath the floors
I am the stained glass in the window
Aching for light left in limbo

I am the night pouring into the rooms
From holes in the moldy rotting roof
I am the sagging spiral stairs
That leads you up to nowhere
© Milan Lopes