Writing Prompt Wednesday #54

 Foreclosure: Write a poem or short story about someone who has lost or is about to lose their home. https://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/

    She stared at the empty plot of land, tears filling her eyes. No! No! How could this have happened? One second she was young and her home was here and the next…
    She had gotten the news a couple of months ago. That dad had sold the house, that it and the rest of her neighborhood was being destroyed in order to make a city, that it would never be the same ever again. But she hadn’t taken the time to come here and see it. 
    She tried to tell herself that it was because she was too busy; because she had just gotten her new job and she wanted to make a good first impression. But that wasn’t the truth. Her job allowed leave; she had time. But she had been scared. Scared of what her home would become. And now she was here, and it was every bit as bad as she had feared.
    The place where her block once stood had been crushed into rubble, and construction workers were working to build a skyscraper there. The park where she and her sisters once played at was reduced to more room for streets. Her home was gone, and the people who destroyed it left nothing in their wake.
    She wandered the destroyed town, taking everything in. It surprised her how hard it was to find her way around with everything gone. She had to follow the streets instead of using the familiar shops and homes for landmarks.
    Passing the places where her deepest memories occurred, she felt tears come to her eyes. The field where she had flown her first kite, the coffee shop where she had had her first date, her old school; her life had been built here. These places were everything her life was. This town didn’t change her life, it shaped it. And now it was gone.

    Why? Why had the people here like her dad given in? Were they just too ashamed of their town? No, it was probably for the same reason that she had left. They were scared; scared of what would happen, scared of what they would become. So they had caved. And, in a way, so did she.
    But she knew now that what they had done-what she had done-was wrong. She knew that she should’ve never caved. Because, although the unknown was terrifying, trying to speed up your knowledge of things could destroy them. You must be brave enough to face the fear of the unknown, and strong enough to never cave.
    Because, when you caved, when you gave up what you believed in and what was most important to you, it would be destroyed. The builders of this city had the pretense of making this town better than it was, but they instead tore it to bits with no intention to bring it back. This city may be good for some people, but not for me and not for the rest of the people who once had control over it. 
    Never cave, especially not to the unknown. If you do, the unknown will swallow you, and leave nothing behind.