Echoes

“Echoes” Free-Verse, July-August 2017

Your ghost follows me around,
haunting and taunting me.
I don’t know if I miss you,
or the me I was before you.

Through the window,
I catch a glimpse of you behind the trees—
a shadow of who you once were to me,
still frozen in time.

Trapped inside these walls
are lies I’ve tried to ignore,
bubbling up in the peeling paint,
all these years later.

Echoes of past conversations
bleed in my ears
while I scream over the noise
of what is now silent.

Living in parallels,
I guide the me I once was to escape
the darkness into safety and light,
though I once let you take it all.

-Brandi Easterling Collins