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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Author: Mary Waterfield

Extinction

I live amid order.
Sanitary floors.
Washed windows.
Vanilla walls.
Houses,
where stone accumulate,
are torn down
when their purpose is over.
And the stories disappear.

Memory fades.
We become an antique presence
where we lived.
An artifact,
as a rock
around which tides swirl
in relentless time,
until we are washed away.

We did not change.
We liquidated.
Planted no seed,
no reply to destiny.
In our wake
an empty theater with no survivors,
no hand to turn off the lights
and honor the dead.