A Haunted Portrait
by, Melissa R. Mendelson

I saw the girl
with the feather in her hat
in my darkest hour,
but I was sinking fast.
And nobody was going
to take me home,
and she walked down the hall,
leaving white whispers in the wind.
And nobody would believe a word
that I said.
I was the ghost,
and she was now memory.
I was witness,
and she was gone
with a finger to her lips.
Now, the walls were vacant,
and her portrait was buried
under six feet of dust
in a basement of forgotten thought.
But on this day,
the day I come home,
there she is
back on the wall,
life in perfection
with no such tragedy
to fade to black.