Mrs. Whitman

Her house was a shadow

Pressed against an oil-streaked sky

Precarious,

As if it edged against a mass of inverted stars

Inside, I remember only drab greys

Sparse, worn furnishings

Snapshots from another era

I came with two of my cousins

Sequestered in the living room

Without a television

In the sickly glow of gaslights

The rest of the house was even darker

As if it had been consumed

By the ghost of her dead husband

=

One night on a dare

I slipped into back of the house

Mrs. Whitman was creaking slowly up the stairs

She rarely spoke and wore her features lifeless

I tried to steal a glance up into her bedroom

But darkness swathed the doorway

Like open-armed wraiths

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That night felt different

Particularly sinister

I ran back to the living room

And wrapped myself

In the abysmal warmth of overly starched sheets

Pressed in a palate with my cousins

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After that night

I never saw Mrs. Whitman again

My parents told me

She’d fallen from her bedroom window

Startled by a rat

But I know the truth…

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(I feel awful today so I don’t know if I will be as prolific as usual but I did manage to write this. Its a true story but since I was so young its obviously been embellished with my fear!)

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