A Haunted House

A Haunted House

There is a haunting in my home
A ghost in every corner
She peeks from drawers
and yellowed scrapbooks
It's me!
The Other girl
Before M.S.

There are pure smiles from pasted pictures
Her name circled here, there in concert programs
How neat the cursive letters
Filled with carefree cares
and life's precarious mysteries.

I was twenty-five, then
There were babies and birthdays
Career and school plans
To meet an expected end.

Now they hover
Phantom fragments and
Amber ashes that whisper, so loudly,

"Remember......remember?"

Oh! To exorcise that chimera child
Give birth to a new me
content with present moments
Happy with a birdsong, knowing
I nest in a home of temporary twigs.

Now I'll learn to bend with the wind
Like the daisies at my doorstep
Loving what remains
And not, what was to be.