Scene of the Crime

Today you return to the scene of the crime,
a decade or more later.
There is no blood on the sidewalk,
no convenient bodies.
All the evidence has been removed,
carefully boxed and put away
in a mutual agreement that no felony occurred,
free to create our own version of history.

You will walk the city
with those that bear the same scars,
carefully hidden under shirts and smiles,
and visit the sites, the places you once believed safe.

These are beautiful places, city markets, grand hotels,
intimate coffee shops. Places that once were,
but no longer are
yours.

Murky places. Funhouses designed by Satan,
too beautiful and too terrible to remember
and so you pass them by, a tourist once again
in what once was your life.