A body was found in my home town.
They are calling homicide.
People I know are scared,
More than that,
They are paralyzed.
Worried that it could be them,
Danger lurking around every corner.

We lost three highschool students earlier this year.
It feels like life times ago.
I watched a whole city mourn together.
Even the streets seemed to weep.
And street lamps gave hugs.
I was sick from all the crying,
Sick from watching people break down.
Sick of the sadness that hung around.

I haven’t seen my own city streets in two weeks.
I don’t think I’d recognize them if I did.
They are shuddering in shadows,
Anxious for salvation.
But here I sit,
Wondering the age and race of the victim.
Desensitized to the reality of it all.

When three of my peers died this year I did not mourn them rationally.
I wondered what their corpses looked like.
If they had become gaunt with rigor mortis,
Or if they were still soft and supple as they had been all the times they did not acknowledge me.

I am sitting miles away from everything I grew up tracing in my mind,
Wondering how a nameless corpse looks on a cold metal slab.
Laughing at the people chasing ghosts over their shoulders.

Small towns are too easily rocked by tragedy.
I think I could knock mine over with a pinky finger.
This year has proved to me that the good die young,
And the young die loved.
I wonder who loved the man they found in the park.
Will he be just another ghost to haunt these grounds?

If I were to die right now,
They would find my body stiff in the morning.
I would be all rigor mortis,
Less soft girl next door.
I wonder who would have loved me.
Am I bound to just be another ghost haunting this town?