‘The Ghost Girl’: A Poem by Joshua C. Frank

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The Ghost Girl

One sunny May, I ran to play,
__When I was twelve years old,
Upon the hill.  I miss her still—
__A girl with curls of gold
In ribbon ties, big sky-blue eyes,
__And waving, dark-red dress
Soon ran my way and asked to play—
__How could I not say yes?

“I’m Beth,” she said.  “My mother’s dead;
__I’m hiding from her ghost.”
I thought, “A shame, her gruesome game,”
__But soon I was engrossed.
We laughed and played along the grade,
__Cavorted up the hill,
And soon rolled down, clothes turning brown,
__Collapsed, and then lay still.

Then Beth and I stared toward the sky,
__Then wrestled, then caressed,
And very soon that afternoon,
__Our love began the rest.
We hoped our playing would one day
__Give rise to married bliss.
I gazed into her pools of blue;
__We leaned in for the kiss.

A woman’s ghost gave off the most
__Horrendous, ghastly chill.
We stood upright in cold and fright;
__Her ghost-hand reaped the kill.
I saw Beth die.  Her ghost stood high
__And quickly shed its shell.
Her ribbons fastened to the grass
__As down her body fell.

Both, hand in hand, flew off the land.
__Beth’s ghost was forced to go
Away from me like Annabel Lee,
__But where, I’ll never know.
Then Beth up high bid me goodbye;
__She waved as she looked back.
The two ghosts flew into the blue,
__And everything went black.

I felt Mom shake me wide awake;
__She’d found me on the hill.
“Are you all right?” She yelled in fright.
__I sat up feeling ill.
I told her of my one-day love
__And how she met her death.
My mother deemed it all a dream
__And said there was no Beth.

So I believed I’d been deceived
__And never met the lass,
Until I found, upon the ground,
__Her ribbon coiled on grass.
The ghost who took her didn’t look
__And left it unawares.
I picked the band up in my hand
__And three blonde, curly hairs.

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Joshua C. Frank works in the field of statistics and lives in the American Heartland.  His poetry has also been published in Snakeskin, The Lyric, Sparks of Calliope, Westward Quarterly, New English Review, and many others, and his short fiction has been published in several journals as well.