In The Rain

[Guest]

I could see a ghost buried alive,
curled tightly beneath folded leaves,
collapsed trees,
and branches stripped bare from this past winter.

She writhed in pain without moving at all,
caught in a wind that wasn't,
crying out in a noiseless whisper.

I had to close my eyes to remove myself from the scene.

What had happened to this creature to bring this...
this death?
this life?
this existence that reaches levels beyond any hell Dante could have known?

God,
I want to reach out to her,
to brush the silken strands away from the sun bleached bone,
but I don't.

She'll infect me,
I know it.

She'll infect me with her misery,
her pained essence,
and I can't have that.

Already,
I find myself infected with a life that couldn't be far from hers,
and to add her sickness to my own...

How much faster would it take me to her?

I should do the right thing:
I should call someone for her;
help her from this place;
hide her from the light;
sing her a song,
for she is truly one of the missing.

What does it make me to leave a broken heap here,
alone in the dirt,
beneath the broken weeds?

Am I really any different?