Cast a Light
Her ghost stirs in the darkness where my light falls, and I look upon her with a firm stare of regret. We pretend at friendship, trading small words like fragile glass, as if they could hide the scars we carved into each other’s hearts. Even as a shadow of the girl I once loved, she still doesn’t understand what she does to me. “Can we stop here and talk things through?” I ask. She doesn’t reply. Instead, she scribbles notes to me in the dark, her pen scratching like a whisper across eternity. Then the moon breaks through the clouds, and blue-silver light rains down, dancing through her hair—hair that’s now only vapor, a mist of memory. If there were still blue in her eyes, I’d swear I was looking at her again. “If I love you with all my heart,” I ask softly, “will you return my love?” The ghost turns, smiling faintly, and begins to sew her jacket of death with her two pale hands. She shakes her head, sadly, as icicles form along her cheeks. It’s a dark place I visit when she ...