misplaced

I don't know anything about this farm except that it is empty. The barn, the outbuildings, the house.

You can tell an empty house from a distance away. No signs of life. Whoever once called it "home" has moved on. And you can romanticize all day about the memories left behind but there's nobody there to tell them or to even think them.

I can't say where this empty farm can be found other than monroe county illinois. Just as I can't say what became of the family who once lived there. The reasons they no longer do are part of their mystery. It might be a sad one but it might be a happy one too. I can't say. It isn't for us to probe. The land surrounding this empty farm is still worked. Crops were recently harvested. Someone keeps the grass and weeds from overtaking this place. So it isn't so much forgotten as misplaced. That's it. Some family lived their lives here, celebrated birthdays here, said "Merry Christmas" to each other on countless cold December mornings. Cared for each other and then, like a set of car keys to a car you no longer own, just misplaced all that and found other things in another place.