Help | About | Suggestions | Alms | Chat [0] | Users [0] | Log In | Join
 Search:
Poem: Submit | Random | Best | Worst | Recent | Comments   

Ghosts of years (rhymey edit) (Free verse) by ecargo
She wears the scratchy skirt she seldom wears-- the one for funerals and interviews and other stiff affairs, and even high-heeled shoes, the pinching kind that make her limp for days, and watches other ends unwind from spools of common thread, and tales unfold like maps laid flat, each well-marked route now stained and old, showing where these other sojourners had been, scored with fold-lines and faults of long use, worn and thin. And if she imagines that in resolution there’s some ragged judgment, well, who can blame her? She welcomes this end, needs the final hangnail tear of separation, thinly weeping but clean and clearly healing, frustration almost bloodless, already purged and shouted out, unlike these many others here, who spurt their hurt in gouts or drip steadily from injuries inflicted, partings like a briar tangle of lives entwined, where hope ends trapped and mangled. But not for her, not for them, whatever “them” remains, most of it long spent, no longer subject to the pain and strains of extrication, and even anger mostly gone or mostly going. They’ve both moved on, as much as one moves on, with, maybe, a small, dull throb still left to probe, some phantom limb all that's left between them, a specter hand of what once was and now is out of promise. And in the marble vault, she waits her turn and in he comes, neat suited as he’d seldom been, the final end, with roses and a champagne toast to raise with her in burying their ghosts.

Back to poem details

xxx67.172.190.25310January 15, 2007 9:44 PM PST
Jill Stockinger67.172.190.25310January 15, 2007 9:32 PM PST
Anonymous67.172.190.25310January 15, 2007 8:01 PM PST
x0lovelylarnx0152.163.100.658March 31, 2006 6:04 PM PST
matt door65.32.138.736March 30, 2006 8:53 PM PST
ALChemy24.74.100.118March 30, 2006 9:30 AM PST
Below lie old votes
Dovina70.38.78.2299March 27, 2006 6:46 PM PST



Track and Plan your submissions ; Read some Comics ; Get Paid for your Poetry
PoemRanker Copyright © 2001 - 2024 - kaolin fire - All Rights Reserved
All poems Copyright © their respective authors
An internet tradition since June 9, 2001