I stand on my own at the foot of the stair

in the house of my childhood, now empty and bare:

a sweet summer breeze drifting in through the door

scatters petals like jewels on the dark wooden floor.

 

I see a young girl; the wild flowers in her hair

are long gone but their fragrance still hangs in the air.

Bright hopes, happy laughter and innocent play

are the dust of dead dreams in a sleep of decay.

 

As the fly in the cobweb knows things will get worse

and the wasp in the jam jar thinks sweetness a curse,

as the fish in the net struggles hard to break free,

so I try to escape from the things that hold me.

 

I still hear the footsteps, the murmurs, the sighs,

see the rain-sodden landscape, the lowering skies,

feel the sinking, the sickness, the guilt and the pain,

taste the poison of memories again and again.

 

Now I stand all alone at the foot of this stair

that climbs to my torment and whisper a prayer,

a prayer for deliverance, a prayer to forgive,

for a lifetime of sorrow that won’t let me live.

 

For the ghosts that I wanted to lay are still here,

their voices still echo and still they appear,

their thoughts are a darkness, their deeds a deep stain

full of shadowy things that forever remain.

 

In the chill summer breeze I stand frozen, alone

in this ruin of rooms that I once thought my home;

but the girl with the flowers running in through the door

is as dead as the petals that lie on the floor.

 

© Diane Simkin 2008 reproduced by permission of the author