David Reuter’s most recent poem to appear here was “Saturday Afternoon Hero” (August 2019).

Ghost Story
By David Reuter

The specter of things
that lashed through my languid existence,
a barb at the end of a whip,
can roar to life
in the space of a somber tale.
There is torture in this stolid room
where I am shackled, raising spirits.
I raise it from the hazy shade,
a spotlight slicing moody gloom
where it has loved so long to dwell.
The searchlight finds the naked space
and brightens with a searing scour.
It finds my hidden hollowed heart
through which I strain the untold tale.
A raging, quaking din,
a shadow from a bleaker time,
rolls rapid through the brittle bones
that helped ensnare the skulking yearn.
Like bubbles from the apparition dark,
it aims a relentless path
until it burns,
a visible fit in lighted day.
The hulking beasts of a brazen past
recede with my heated breath
and walk with me no more
for as long as I choose to forget.