It’s a different world behind those buildings, in the narrow private alleys with their human aroma.
The empty buildings and alleys both haunted with articles and subjects.
Things left behind.
Lives abandoned.
Moments and possessions forgotten.
*
This place is haunted.
Because bad things happened here.
Because of freakish events.
Smoldering desires and unfinished business.
It’s haunted because things happened here.
Lives were changed in this alley because they were forced to be.
*
The young girls hair, sheared off and still in a pony tail.
Did she cut it off for disguise?
Was it cut for her?
By the severing of her hair, so to was her past severed from her.
Her ghost floats past, free and laughing.
A miserable life traded for something less harsh.
The things she was forced to do…
Now she gets things for it.
How cool it feels! How free!
The leash of hair cut off.
*
And above the stairs in the doorway.
A fearful, sad and scared ghost.
Was he a guard?
A homeless person with luck enough to find a whole empty building for shelter?
He was assaulted.
His jacket fell to the floor.
He was struck again.
He lost a shoe.
His ghost peeps out from the dark shadows.
White of his eye.
Sneaky movement of a blurred silhouette.
His perfectly good jacket rests in the weather.
His perfectly good shoe rests.
No more miles to cover.
Peaceful and purposeless.
Do only I see the ghosts?
Do I like seeing the ghosts?
Maybe someone needs to see what others can’t.
Without me they wouldn’t exist.
Wouldn’t be honored.
Wouldn’t be remembered.