Gabriel Shudak

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Haunted
by Gabriel Shudak

There’s a ghost in my house.
She walks past me in the halls without a sound.
She never looks up at me,
Her eyes pointed towards the ground.

In the afternoon, she reads her books and watches her shows.
But when I try to check in, she gets up and goes.
She resumes in another room, without a noise to
be heard.
Her silence is deafening.
please, just one word!

Sometimes I catch her in the kitchen,
cooking a meal for one.
She always loses her appetite.
I enter and she’s done.

At night she comes in and lays in my bed.
She sleeps a lot for someone that’s dead.

There’s never been a night that I’ve seen her face,
She sleeps facing the wall,
her back to my space.

The only time she ever lets out a peep,
Is when I roll over,
pretending to sleep.
That’s when she starts to ask herself,
when did it die?
In all my life I’ve never heard a silenter cry.

There’s a ghost in my house.

He floats around the halls, unseen.
Unaware he’s trapped in the world between.

He moves from room to room,
chilling me with his touch.
He wants to share everything,
he wants too much.

He pounds on the walls and stacks chairs to the ceiling,
trying to be noticed with all of his being,
Slamming the doors and relentlessly screaming.

Now, I’m no medium nor a necromancer.
I have no crystal ball that contains the answer
On how to bring back life or resurrect,
But believe me, he's not the only victim of neglect.

On the day that he died
I mourned and I cried,
And truth be told
There were signs before his soul was sold

Before his body was even depleted
Every night I begged and I pleaded
To put down every bottle he said that he “needed”
Until he drank himself away.

The spirit left
But the body stay.

He was never violent or explosive.
But I watched him eat himself away.
His soul became corrosive.

Now he wants my help for him to grow.
It pains me, but he’s not the man I used to know.
Now I’m too tired to help or assist.
He’ll have to be his own exorcist.

Sometimes I catch him late at night,
Stopping right before the tunnel of light.

There, when he thinks he’s alone,
he pleads with the sky,
Begging to know,
why did it have to die?

There’re ghosts in our house.

They’re you and me,
Haunted by the love
that used to be.

You can’t always save what’s dead and gone.
Now it’s time for us to move along.

Even if we don’t see each other on the other side,
I’ll still treasure
The time
We were
Alive.

We’re pleased to announce the Spring 2023 issue of student work. Please check out the links below. Enjoy!