Ghost Writer cries.

But you can't hear her.

Sometimes,
she can't even hear herself.
Or, at least,
she chooses not to;
she chooses to ignore
the sob caught in her throat
like a pill that's washed
down the wrong way.

Ghost Writer attempts
to swallow her sob
which then catapults
to the depths
of her stomach
where she can
never
reach it
(where she can never
fully tame it
to silence).

When Ghost Writer
studies her image
in the mirror,
she can't quite comprehend
the sight of her reflection.
The intricacies of
human life become blurred,
almost inconceivable.

Head tilts in
bemusement--
"so what ?"

Lashes flit against
shrinking pupils--
"these eyes are
vortexes of dream."

Breath respires from
mouth to mirror to fog
to--
"I am not real..."

Ghost Writer's body is
tethered to the earth,
but her soul dwells elsewhere.

Heart pleads,
tries to convince her
of her own existence,
pounding with the force
of a Goddess' blood
against skeleton-key ribs.

But heart cannot
get through to her.

Heart is padlocked,
too far removed from subject,
like the monkey's heart
that "hung" in the
rose apple tree.

Phantom heart
for Phantom Woman.

But it is unclear
if Ghost Writer is the monkey
or the crocodile's wife
in our fable.

Ghost Writer is hungry,
but for what exactly
she hungers for,
she does not know.
She only knows that
she is barren
like the eye sockets
children cut out of
white bedsheets on Halloween.

The colour has been stripped
from the canvas of her creation.

Ghost Writer is
an unfulfilled masterpiece
(something will always be
missing).

So she picks up her quill
to make sense of
this senseless emptiness.

She writes and
she writes and
she writes and--
"How prolific!" they say.

Yet,
all of these poems and
not a friend to her name.

Ghost Writer
sleepwalks through
the terror of this
loneliness.

She goes to grasp
the fingertips of those
she once knew--
those who once cared
(supposedly).  
Anchors to ground her
to the reality that
threatened to strand her.

A mass of beating vessels--
proof that, as long as they
are in her presence,
as long as they can offer her
the tentative connections
of their friendship,
she, too, is alive.

But when she reaches for them,
they pull away,
seamless as the air.

Ghost Writer breaks,
haunts the desolate
alleyways of her psyche
with the plagues of
her insecurities.
Self-esteem erodes
until she devolves
into her worst nightmare--

nothing.

Ghost Writer disappears
(this time without redemption).

She leaves no souvenirs behind
to perpetuate her memory,
no tangible mementoes.

She leaves behind
only that which
will not be destroyed,
by fickle, selfish hands:

She leaves behind the
Poetry.

For even long after the
Vanishing Act has
resolved itself to the relics of
what has  been lost,
Ghost Writer shall
always have the last word.