I can’t promise I won’t haunt you
in the life you lead after me,
just as your imagined remarks sometimes
almost audibly strike what would be a chord

but for my out-of-tune heartstrings;
a part of me is still listening on the stairs,
just as a part of you is waiting for me there,
can we leave the places we were re-born?

I don’t make promises for ghosts anymore,
won’t pledge fealty to that cheat Memory,
but I swear to you in the three dot spaces
between us, I will never touch your soul anew.

By Heidi Turner