When death meets you

long before memory remembers,

wrapping tender and dark tendrils

around your heart,

a shadow casts upon all that follows.

Inexplicably.

Without reason the most beloved people,

one after another after another,

disappear.

And the pain nearly kills you.

Vanishings become a lifetime of dancing,

red shoes stuck to your tired feet,

exhaustion pulling your heart toward the edge,

right up to the moment when you find out:

The she you could not have named,

She died.

And you were with her through the end.

Ghosts haunt lifetimes.