My Own Ghost

It passed before me in a terrifying light

It seeped to the cold of my bones

I faced the pain on a summer’s eve

I faced death alone.

I stood by myself, looking down

At the body running red on the ground.

I didn’t shout, shiver or cry

My heart was muted, subdued with a sigh

When it passed through.

I suppose I did what anyone would do

My quiet footsteps searching for the truth.

I found him looking down a bottle of scotch,

In the damp pub by the docks.

I cannot say I didn’t want to kill him

Right then and there,

But there was this hollow feeling,

Shading purples and blues, that stole my care,

I took the seat across from him at a table,

And watched the uneventful night go by.

His face was long and red

His eyes blurred with drink,

His leg shook uncontrollably,

His thoughts unable to think.

Every time I looked down at my hands;

He’d left me for dead.

I had no time to question the cruel fate dealt me,

I only reveled in the revenge sketched

On my raised eyebrow,

And fell from my lips.

He sat like a nervous, quiet man;

Nothing as he was before,

But there was no arrow, no sign,

That screamed he was the murderer.

I had to stay,

I told myself,

Glaring into his eye,

He had to live with it,

To suffer just as I.

As the moon etched its way across the dark,

As the loons sang out with the lark, 

I could no longer remember my life.

Why we’d fought in the first lace, our strife.

Looking down I was vanishing,

Limb by limb,

But I wouldn’t let him get away with it.

As she stumbled home,

His hand clenching a bottle

I chased him down the street

Pushing him down where the two roads meet.

And for one, terrifying moment

He saw me,

Out-lined in blue,

The marker of a time holding a dark untruth,

He would never forget,

The look of death,

Of vengeance in my eye.

Wouldn’t you be scared

If on your way, 

You met

Your own ghost?