Her Tragedy

“I am a ghost,” she said,

“a shade that no-one sees,

I am a shimmer of the leaves

As the wind plys the trees.”

She wended ‘round the table,

And lighted on the chair,

And a ray of golden sunlight,

Caught a ringlet of her hair.

“Gazes pass right through me,

Never glimpsing who I am.

What they see is an empty soul,

Held upright by strings and hands.”

“And what do you see,” I asked,

“When in the mirror you do peer?”

Her hand reached to her ringlets,

Which she tucked behind her ear.

“I only see my outline,”

She hastily replied.

“I am a cutout made of cardboard.”

She closed her eyes and sighed.

But never did she ask

What I could really see;

Behind all her confusion,

And her missing sense of ‘me’.

She didn’t want to hear it,

From the ones who mattered most.

She would rather flit about,

Thinking that she was a ghost.