The promises are the ghosts
lingering long after everything is
dead and gone. Dressed like dolls with
broken shoes adorning their translucent feet.
They dance across creaking floorboards,
glimpse between closed blinds, and cry
in the overflowing attic. Only their light
illuminates the inside of the worn wooden house.
Outside rests the gravestones, the newest
splintered by a crack running between
the names, marking the end of the line
and the bordering of the house.
No sound breaches the ghosts’ lips,
a punishment to mirror their life, never
crossing the door’s threshold to be
granted a chance at living.
They are left with only a memory of the house when it breathed as a
reminder of what could have been (if only they had been kept).
Writer To Writer Literary Journal 