Opinions?
God pulled into the parking lot of a Walmart
In his Burnt Sienna 1978 Buick Lesabre.
He stepped out into the cloud filled gloom,
It was about to rain.
He scanned the horizon and saw
The grey sameness that enveloped the world,
The bare trees, and the broken streetlamps.
The abandoned hulks of metal
left glassless from the blast and frozen.
The time capsule no one meant to create.
There was nothing left of free will
But skeletons framed in empty windows,
A study of life as it once was.
There must be something left of humanity
Hiding in the pockets of caves,
Barricaded into the basements of buildings…
Eventually they would venture out,
And he would find them.
Until then, he stalked the concrete and asphalt
That sat outside the stores with their shiny possibility.
He searched the shells cradled between
The whites of their carefully delineated boundaries
Hoping to find life hunkered down
in the backseat of a Chevrolet.
He searched the electronics department and the canned food aisle.
He checked in dressing rooms and in storage areas.
He looked behind bookcases and under couches.
He scoured every corner until he fell down exhausted
On a bed built for two.
He woke when the light fled the landscape.
He rose and walked though what was left of the doors
Back out into the dull night and its shadowy despair.
There was nothing here.
He pretended that none of this meant anything,
That the moments between believing
were all he had left.
He believed that,
despite the fragments he left behind,
That he would find
What mattered.
He stopped.
Breathed in the yesterdays that forgot him
And the tomorrows that never could.
He picked the dandelion that grew in the crack
Next to the collection of shopping carts.