Steel grey mars the sky of a dead world

A specter stares at a stained glass rendering of a dead story he read about in a dead book on a dead religion in a dead language.

He sits on a dead tree and kneels on its dead kin.

A revenant sings

Smoke pours from the burning remains of dead plants turned incense - dying

He walks toward the pulpit

Carved and engraved by a dead artist from a dead town named after a dead slave owner

He grabs the pulpit

Dead skin of his fingernails gripping twisted filigree molded from dead vines

He speaks of life

Of Sunday morning soirées dancing in the summer heat laughing through the harsh winter laying under covers hiding from their nightmares board games on the floor of the living room of the new house on a rainy Tuesday afternoon the smell of pancakes every Saturday morning driving thriving twisting writing breathing bleeding beating

Living

And he almost forgets

She is dead

And his stories

Are ghost stories