LaRae Pynas

Rowan pressed her eye to the brass keyhole and saw her mother alive. Not a ghost, not a trick of light, alive, moving, her hair pinned up the way she wore it to keep it out of the stew, her sleeves pushed to the elbow, her mouth forming the familiar, half-sung hum of some song Rowan could almost remember. On the other side of the cheap white basement door, in a city block poured and paved five ye…

I keep the door you closed from fading away. The hallway holds its breath each sleepless night, Your absence is the ghost that bids me stay. I trace the peeling paint, the soft decay, As though my touch could turn regret to light; I keep the door you closed from fading away. I whisper what I never found a way To say before you vanished out of sight; Your absence is the ghost that bids me stay. Th…