Ghosts

She entered my vision at dusk.

It was a viscous sort of evening,

in the moments where the world was

changing its mind to the very cusp of dark—

I watched the gleam of the rising moon

before it was high enough to call night,

and sunset was a thing of the past.

I would have been better off with the light of the stars,

with the way I was stumbling through that forest.

And then I glanced ahead to where the murmuring trees tapered

into twisted scrubby bushes and rough grass

and the hill rose softly ahead, and there she was.

No more substantial than anything else—

the light was like seeing through dust

and everything, whether real (or not),

took on the same hue of golden gray.

And then, as I picked my way up the grassy knoll,

I couldn’t help but trip on terribly tangled roots

and this was, of course, to blame of the state of the evening

and not because I was caught in her impossible gaze,

unable to take my eyes off hers.

And her black tangled hair was the only thing

that wasn’t strangled by the light’s trick.

And then I knew that somehow, she had the antidote,

immune to the whims of the days and the nights

and that the skies meant nothing to her,

and she had existed in many of these in-betweens.

And then, in that moment, I wished I could stand like she,

on the gentle rise between the strangling weeds,

and lose the fight for life,

but gain the world in afterthought

and wonder at all that I’d missed before,

—but knew now, as spirits do,

but knew alone,

and could not tell anyone.

Dorothy Swanson Blaker

(she / her)

Content warning: death