Drained Pool, August

The deep end keeps its blue long after the water's gone— a tiled bowl of sky turned upside down, collecting leaves the way a palm collects the small change of the wind.

Children once chalked their fear here, toes curled at the lip of the high board, that held breath before the fall. Now ladders rust into the cracks, and dandelions climb the lifeguard's empty chair.

Listen: the whole thing still echoes, shaped to amplify a splash that never comes. A magpie tests the silence, finds it deep enough to drink from, and leaves a single feather on the drain.

By dusk the concrete gives its heat back slow as a body letting go of a name. The fence chants in its own rust. Somewhere a sprinkler ticks for no one, watering the ghost of a Saturday.