Because this house is haunting her

Poems for the season of ghost stories and remembrance

Photo by 4jml.e on Unsplash

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I’m getting cheeky again and showing you poems that haven’t been fully vetted. Both of these are new. One is maybe a little spooky. The other one is … well. You’ll see.

Many thanks to Anna Brones for the prompt for “Nine Crows.”

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NINE CROWS                                                                                         2025
(From a prompt by Anna Brones)


Three on the curbstone.
Three on the wire.
Three on your windowsill.

Three in the cornfield.
Three on the weathervane.
Three on your horse’s saddle.

Three in the cards.
Three in a dream.
Three in the dark of your eye.

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THE HAUNTING HOUSE                                                                      2025   


She stays a ghost because this house is haunting her —
the bare and quiet rooms, the kitchen stove now cold,
the warm curve of the hearth around its crumbling ash,
the unlocked door that never opens — memory’s walls
close around her, shivering with the life that was.

If once she heard her mother in the kitchen, humming
old hymns and show-tunes as she kneads and shapes her loaves,
if once her father, whistling, pushed the door ajar,
blown in on one cold breath that warms as soon as welcomed,
to claim her mother’s brisk embrace and sidelong smile,

if once she saw them in the chairs that flank the hearth,
her mother with a bowl of apples in her lap
to peel and slice, her father as he shakes the pages
of the morning paper’s evening news, leans forward
and poker-scrapes the fire’s logs into new flame,

if once she saw them living, saw this house alight
with all the fire they shared in lifetimes lost to memory,
her ghost-self’s empty chill would sigh itself away
and quit these quiet rooms, fleet as a breath of cold
forgotten when a door swings shut with love inside.

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