Chimes of Harmony Lane

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On Harmony Lane, the lawns are all green,

The mailboxes painted, the pavement is clean.

The smiles are all perfect, the handshakes are firm,

A thirty-year mortgage, a reasonable term.

But a rule is unspoken, a custom unseen,

A terror that hides in the suburban sheen.

You watch for the package, the box on the stoop,

The start of the silence, the end of the loop.

It’s a wind chime. It’s yellow. As bright as the sun.

It signals the family’s last race has been run.

The Millers, in August, they hung one with pride,

By Thursday their house was all empty inside.

Their cars in the driveway, their paper unread,

The neighbors just nodded at words left unsaid.

New people moved in with a laugh and a wave,

And dug in the garden that covered a grave.

The Garzas, in April, they got one by mail.

They thought it was charming, right down to the scale

That played a soft tune when the evening breeze blew.

A song of forgetting. A rhythm of new.

They vanished on Friday. No fuss and no fight.

Their porch light switched off in the dead of the night.

A moving van came in the rain and the gray,

And a different family was smiling by day.

I don’t know who sends them. I don’t know who cleans.

I don’t know the purpose, the ends or the means.

But the system is flawless, efficient, and cold,

A story of progress, I’ve quietly been told.

My hands have been shaking, I’m sweating with fear,

The sound of a truck that is stopping too near.

A box on my doorstep, wrapped up in a bow.

A gift for my neighbor. A chime for Monroe.