A Room
Such utile architecture, a place to murder and to burn the evidence of murder. There are ghosts watching from the sooted walls, reaching out to loved ones and strangers in their shared final moments. They cry that the marks’ filthy lessons aren’t universal, that the horror of this tangible reality is denied to excuse hatreds borne since Eden. These walls will not be cleaned, the pipes below the ceiling not removed, but if they were the haunting would continue: The pale spirit of a child gazes from the flowers that bound the small monument in the room’s center, puzzled by the fault that brought it here.