ghost in the window (Photo credit: The Raggedy-man)

He stood
Bedraggled urchin
on the doorstep
He was a parcel
left open in the rain
A supplicant gazing
into my unblinking eyes
one more time
‘Take me back’

I’d envisaged this moment
a thousand, thousand times
But not like this
Somewhere more elegant
even eloquent
A dance hall dressed
for a dark masked ball
Where they dance forever
to the same sad song
‘Take me back’

And words I uttered
to the brittle wind
would make little sense
to all else but us
And it could be he did not hear me
Could not divine my intent
‘I cannot take back
What I never had’

Blistering moments
too long ago
belong to another life, another life
And can I recall?
It’s all scattered debris
soaked in tears
we never shed
‘Take me back’

He’s a ghost I think
or perhaps that’s me
Memory eludes me these days
Just whispering on the breeze
A black crow that’s beating
pecking at my door
‘Take me back’

And I repeated it
Said it again, again
Against all my will and his
As though these words alone
could tempt the earth
to swallow us whole
Drag him down with me
‘I cannot take back
what I do not own’

Hands outstretched
Beggar’s hands
Dirty and shaking
Frenetically alive
Guilt darkens the skin
not just the heart it seems
‘Take me back’

The back door is banging now
Driven, gusting through the house
rendering it as emptiness
How bereft of all life
and it’s been this way
too many years
‘Take me back’

‘But it’s too late’ I whisper
It’s always too late
I’m hovering, lessening now
In the yard under a tree
I lie waiting, just waiting
for something that comes
far too late
‘I cannot take back
What I cannot hold’

‘And my hands rest too long
In my soul there’s no song
With no-one to belong
And I can’t take you back
I’m only now what I lack
And far too far down this track
Down this track……‘

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

A bit of a ghost story, inspired by mindlovemisery’s prompt 31, at : http://mindlovemisery.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/prompt-31-take-me-back/