I cross the threshold between two rooms,
to see you there, tall and bright;
happy again to let your words spill out,
carelessly like a flagon carried mid dance,
confident there is plenty more
and rags at hand to clean the floor.

I haven’t seen you like that in a generation,
who we were- long since old and dying,
making way for who we are now;
reduced to somber stones with names-
                                  only visited on occasion.

I feel those old ghosts resurrected,
bursting through coffins, through earth and the fog of years;
desperate for relevance again.
Crying out please, see me friend!
through laughter breathe life into these lungs!”

But how could you now see the ghost of me,
or anything between who you are
and who, in all this time, I have come to be?

Joy has propositioned you from this world,
while I, before, was naught but misery.

Let me retreat, satisfied as a memory.
Settle those spirits within and lay them to rest,
I beg the fates on our behalf,
please, don’t see me, lest
            in all these years,
                  neither of us be free.