Challenging Poetry

my ghosts

I’m surrounded by ghosts, not white
sheeted nightmares but phantoms
appearing with the memory of a voice,
the touch of a hand, the constant
beeping of a heart monitor
measuring a life too short,
fingers on a piano sure and true
as they dance a sonata,
the music of laughter, the smell
of peppermint and coffee—
long loved ghosts, now lost, haunt me.
never leave me.
please, never leave.

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