School's out and gone.

Twice now, I've returned to visit two of my old elementary schools (we moved a lot),

only to discover that they had long since been torn down.

The fields within which they sat did not betray their pasts.

The land that once hosted thousands of drawings, and glue and tears and snot and fear and beginnings and endings and friendships now held none of those things.

A young tree and a well manicured lawn grew in the place of one, nothing but overgrown grass occupied the place of the other.

This week I watched the daily progress of an old school be dismantled on my way to work.

Watching a school get taken apart is hard. Even if I never attended this one, it's vacant and slowly deteriorating shell was holding a place.

Now the halls that it contained, the stains, the way the light fell on books so many days in a row is only occupying the minds of former students and teachers. And later when our minds lose those memories, this school will be dismantled again, piece by piece.

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