Women become ghosts after fifty- late night pacing moving silently across floors
Puddled footsteps of living longer than biological directives that have yet to evolve into modern life. Divergent. Euphemisms say power surge as if masking the reality of life as it closes its blue skies into gray ash. It is a winding down, haunting the back spaces of the brain little things fly away like tiny wrens startled by a question that once had an answer. It has flown. Alighting further up the stark branches of fall upon the landscape.
Sheet wrapped, see though radiation rising, lifting, padding silent opening doors, cupboards, clinking glass, iced. Profiled throat swallowing softer now, pulling a chill into blood coursing across a chest burnished with heat.
Silvered hair, face of smudged features no longer collagen sharpened, crease deepened brow more furrowed knowing more understanding more. Self turned inward. No longer caressed by words of passion, shadowed senses of the surface of awareness nothing has the purity of black and white youth.
Grey middle places. Except for compromise bargaining away youth the soul is now closer to its origin as in birth so the ghost now walks closer to death. No grey place here. Light is more portent. Dark more inked like a tattoo into the short walk toward the closing doors only glimpsed.
The ghost no longer searches for acceptance no longer sits with confusion or rejection. For a wraith it does not matter. A lovers hand that no longer reaches, a long gaze that does not break from a stranger, a flush of heart beating intimacy, it does not matter it is not a power surge and the mendacity of that bold lie is somehow supposed to make up for the lack of understanding of living with the puddling of an entire existence silvered onto the skin, dripping into the hair, melting of the chin, skin, and muscle.
Morning comes. The sheets shed the tossed night. The wet footsteps dried upon the floors. Only fingerprints upon the glass left to shed light on the haint moving through the rooms.
Out the window she looks. She gets up. This is a second cup morning.