once a wild rose

Piles of ancient old trinkets sung as the sun sank below a horizon lit by magnetic orange rays. Glass faces with smiles painted atop their dimples lay broken and discarded among the lot. Once held by tiny hands of new soft skin, were now embraced by dirt and decay.

Music boxes with willowy dancers faintly chirped with out of tune tin notes. Their ballerina skirts of tulle had been torn and left to strings as the continued spinning the only movements known to them. Some additions had been brought recently, still wearing their wrappings. Plastic grasped their manufactured skin, vacuumed to seal away the wickedness of the world.

Sunset brought its shadows and clung to the piles, only peeling itself away once night checked-in. Over across the way, past the refuse and over the river, there spun a carousel with a single rider of twenty-four years. The girl sat like a chrysalis and wore a corset of violet blue with bows on her face. The satin strings were white, tied like ribbons to the bags below her eyes. She had not been on the carousel but a day and a wink, but the grey in her hair grew, trailing vines of age down into the powdery earth and planted her there.