Residue

Photo to courtesy of Angela LeBlanc

Silence creeps and

crawls like a suffocating fog,

thick with resent and sneering, upward curled smiles.

Malice lingers in the air and fills the nooks of her mind —

left vacant for seventeen years.

Echoes bounce and roll down stairs that she can only remember when snippets of the past flash

in blinding, fleeting moments —

Gone again with no lasting image.