After the last...

...bell had been rung, they came out. From between the lockers, under the doors of store cupboards, out of filing cabinets. The spirits of the trapped, the lost, the uneducated, the burnt out.
The air turned colder as the sun set on yet another day of learning for the living, now as the sun dropped lower and lower in the sky, it was the time for the departed.
The falling sun shone askew through the window highlighting the smears of those still there, who never get to go home for the holidays.
A feeling of sadness fell about the empty corridors as the lights slowly turned off one by one, and the sound of keys being turned in locks got further away.
It was a small chilled hand that was raised in the room where they'd once had so much fun. Desperate to cling onto hope, the hope of what once was, the hand reached and touched the window leaving it's mark as it was lowered in humiliation.
The shadows of what we once were linger after we have grown and moved on.