There are rooms within me
I no longer enter at night
for I know what waits for me there
your shadow in the dark corners
lingering in the silence
long after the memories
should have faded away
the whispers echo your name
a wound that refuses to heal
hauntings are never sudden
they gather over time
a familiar face glimpsed
in the mind’s dark mirror
that is how you became mine
now your ghost walks beside me
an ache I constantly feel
I do not say your name
as the night deepens
and the dark tides flow
but I feel it, the unspoken truth
that you have become
my haunting, my revenant
my quiet ghost, my tether
in all the ways
that cannot be undone
© Ann Bagnall
Annie's Poetry 