The Ghost in the Corner

I’ve had enough of being haunted. It’s not that I’m afraid of the ghost in the corner, but she’s a distraction, especially when I’m reading, writing or watching television. She always has a little smile on her lips and a twinkle in her eye, as if she’s making fun of me.

I admit, I do talk to her – a lot – bouncing ideas off her or telling her my problems. She never once voices an opinion.

But a few months ago, I started seeing Arthur, the first man who was interested in me for a while, and he was coming to dinner on Valentine’s Day.

I warned the ghost in the corner: “This year’s a different thing – I’ll not think of you.” She smiled and twinkled in her corner throughout the meal.

Arthur disappeared before dessert, incensed that my mother had gate-crashed our date.

Kim M. Russell, 13th February 2023

Paul Cézanne – Madame Cézanne In A Yellow Armchair (image found on Wikimedia)

Today at the dVerse Poets Pub, Merril is hosting Prosery Monday, when we write prose, not poetry. It can be flash-fiction or creative non-fiction, should be short prose no longer than 144 words in total (not including the title) and it must include the given poetry line, word for word, although we may break the line and add punctuation, but we cannot change the words in the line or insert words.

Merril has chosen a line from a poem by Charlotte Mew (1869-1928), who she says lived a sad life, about which she has given us some details. As tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, she has picked a line from a poem of lost love, ‘I so liked spring’:

“This year’s a different thing, –
I’ll not think of you.”

Advertisement

31 thoughts on “The Ghost in the Corner”

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.