The Ghost Game
A poem about learning where power still lives when nothing around you has changed.
Can you hear it?
The rattling beneath the stairs.
I was almost certain that I could,
But when I looked it was not there.
The chiming from the clock
Sings its half past twelve,
Reverberating warning bells,
Mockingbirds tucked in the shelves.
Tiptoes on checkered tile,
A whispering open door,
Eyes meeting only darkness—
Not sure I’d welcome more.
Created, berated,
A castle encased by moths,
Dungeons and their captives,
Pawns sacrificed and lost.
Barefoot in the courtyard,
I saw half a woman there,
Eerie shades of porcelain,
Skin stripped and weathered bare.
There’s echoes in the bedrooms,
Tapping behind the walls,
But even in the silence
We pray the structures fall.
I see your silhouette through windows,
You walk like it’s your domain,
But even queens don’t hold all the cards,
For royalty beckons a sickened game.
Plants rearranging as they please,
Ivy and scornful thorns,
No signs of an olive branch—
A silent siege is born.
A patio set I did not place,
Dusty teacups and empty seats,
I can almost see the skeletons,
Cobwebbed hands that clasp to meet.
Voices carry words adrift,
The keys are all too far,
Scattered battlegrounds,
Clanking swords to bars.
Metal chains and wine-pressed stains
We're all bound here in this place.
How do you bring a reckoning
To a corpse dressed up in lace?
Toes curled,
Shoes that never fit,
Ball gowns and bound corsets
Summoned to a dance—
The board was already set.
The apparition in the garden,
A game played in the night.
Promises grow forever stale,
The rook drifting from my sight.
A bowl of mud-tinged water,
Anointing blessings in quiet places.
Fingers pressed against my lips,
Seeking shelter in curious spaces.
The beholding moon,
A lantern to my mind.
A slow thought trickles in—
I feel my lungs unbind.
Are these figures here to haunt me,
Or do I keep them up till dawn?
Am I the holder of the cards?
Is this how I rewrite the song?
Do sinners and saints
Share the same last meal?
I am not bound by iron oaths;
My knees won’t drop and kneel.
A chess game now resides
On your unwelcome table set.
In reality, I hold your king—
The absolver of your debt.
You may think there’s potency,
That you bound me by duress.
The sway you believe you have,
I fear, is rather less.
The bishop finds a line of play,
Reminds me the origin code,
Ripping at the cobwebs
That I’ve come to know.
I thought I was the one being haunted,
Tortured by your spectral call,
Until it suddenly occurred to me—
That I’m the ghost behind the wall.
Because while I hear you,
In this place we all reside,
I carry all the remnants
From which you long to hide.
My essence will always linger
In a fortress where you wish me gone.
But in the night there are faint whispers—
Shame pacing through your wrongs.
Breath pressed against the window,
Warmth clouding darkened glass—
A temporary comfort
For what will come at last.
The clock hands surely tick,
Slowly etching by.
But they are grasping, forever dragging—
This is where time retreats to die.
A kingdom balanced on a single square—
Who will beat the odds?
The hand that moves the pieces—
Some might call this God.
Borrowed valor from the knight.
A diadem. Braided hair.
An ornamental scaffolding—
Where moral balance hangs in the air.
So if we’re anchored together in this tower,
Let’s at least extend a toast.
If fate won’t play its part,
I’ll claim checkmate as the ghost.