New Jersey Zinc (Palmerton, PA) | a blight on the land

I couldn't help myself. The sickness was getting worse and worse every day. There was something inside of me, some terrible blackness that I wanted desperately to hide away, but I knew I couldn't. There was just too much of it, and I was too weak. There were too many things I had said that were entirely wrong, too many things I had done that I needed to redact but never could, too many things I had seen that nobody ever should have. There was no way to take it all back. What I wanted to be grew fainter and fainter, so far off in the distance I could barely even make out its shape, and I was too afraid to look at what I had become. It was seeping out of me, bit by bit, poisoning everything I touched or saw, tainting every word that came out of my mouth. it wasn't what i wanted, but that didn't matter. i had become a ruiner, a toxin, a blight on the land - i didn't have to go out of my way to hurt anyone, it just happened. And as the years went by I watched all the beautiful things around me shrivel and die, and yet still I stood, for I had no other choice.
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New Jersey Zinc, Palmerton PA

Photograph and text by Matthew Christopher of Abandoned America. If you'd like to learn more about this location, it is a featured chapter in the book "Abandoned America: The Age of Consequences," which you can order signed copies of here. It's also available (unsigned) through Amazon/Barnes & Noble/Powells/Indiebound/Booksamillion. You may also be interested in my new book, Abandoned America: Dismantling the Dream, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other online booksellers across the globe.