Ballad of a Vision Dead

Mika Hiroi ’24

The death of him did kill me once when I had thought him gone. His ghost drank pints of fitful sleep, ate screams until the dawn.

Then on the morn I rose with dread but echoes of my tears were silenced by a gleaming sight: His face, there, crystal clear.

I smiled then, just like the sun, and reached to take his hand but stretching fingers curled and touched a swirl of fallen sand.

A sheet of ash before my eyes; a gray unyielding pain. The ghostly true mirage I saw: a trick played by my brain.

The death of him did kill me once. I shrieked my throat rose-raw. And having lost twice over now, my heart will never thaw.