The Tabasco Sauce

It’s red, of course, what’s left of it.
The picnic table is green steel.

All the other tables have salt.
Presumably they were furnished.

The red against green looks handsome.
Why should it seem melancholy?

Since all the tables are empty?
Since it’s the only Tabasco?

There’s something about the remnants
Of jolly social occasions,

Something in you when you see them.
Absent humans, they’re revenants,

The ghosts of their small occasions,
But only in how you see them.

Will you never not be the child
Desirous of being alone

But sad at the signs that the group
Has long since moved on without you?