Apparition

 the floorboards creak, the ceiling rains down dust, the windows are shattered and the moths come in with the night wind. this house was splendid once. no more. time is a thief, and it has stolen much from this place. a once proud mansion made into a revenant, a shadow of its former self.

the house is like me. forsaken. forgotten. alone with nothing but the spiders to keep me company, their webs decorated with husks that used to be flies. my footsteps are hollow thuds in empty hallways. a vagabond soul left behind, the mortal parts of me in the dirt, but the spirit still wandering, still staring out cracked windowpanes at the living.

i see them, but they never see me.

i used to be one of them. i used to laugh and smile like them. i used to love and hope like them. that’s lost to me now. touch, taste, all those things i took for granted before this.

bodiless. invisible. a drifting leaf with no clear destination. i’ve found no door. i’ve been offered no other side. there was life, and then death, and then this.

is this damnation? is it hell? or am i just stuck in between, an unlucky shade that fell through the cracks.

i don’t know.

 
i just wish they could see me one last time.