The Haunting

On drear and endless nights when the thunder in my head is louder than the thunder beyond my window and sleep denies me rest, I have to wash my eyes several times, for her face imprints itself behind closed eyelids. The departed move on, travel away from the gravity of this place and time, they are unshackled from us, we who may still cling to our own emotional chains. What does she want of me? It was a short torrid affair, why this lifetime haunting? You cannot dream someone out of your soul, it's not about memory or forgetting, if there was once love it is a now only a torn rag flying upon heedless winds, a make-believe insubstantial thing. Why does she paint herself before me, and why do I disappear when she looks upon my aged being? I wash my eyes and often wonder if it is really I that haunt her.