The Ghosts of You...

When did the halls here become footfalls for your memory,
Whisper things and shadows, and all the remnants
of your face unseen?

Like some summer/time day that crested easily into night,
The line crossed that no one saw,
The missing timbre of your voice,
No hem to my haw.

When did the faults of echoes blur into one haunting scream,
Breathing just to taunt, torment
All the hope and promise that once did live here?

When did your eyes lose their shine,
Like suns wrestling against the cover of clouds,
The dust of stars falling from a night's sky.

Your voice,
Doesn't calm,
Doesn't sound of peace like it used to.
Your hand,
Doesn't soothe,
It's not gentle anymore,
Bruises in the home/place,
Holes in panels of doors,
Shaking, earthquake things.

And, we lived in these haunted walls,
Dancing around you and your many moods,
Eggshells scattered about,
Like fragments of days gone by,
Cracked and hopeless,
Fragile and ruined.

When did your heart pulse leave, give out, give up
Like the runner who believes he's lost the race,
The model who can no longer give face?

When did you decide my love wasn't enough,
that everything outside was better than the within.

When did the happiness all become a simple fit,
choosing to turn to the chaos of some dark,
hapless, world.

When did the peacetime yield to turmoil,
a choice we both made.

When did your heart stop beating anew,
When will you return,
And, we can be rid of these simple,
ghosts of you?

Jason Christopher Johnson
November 19, 2012