Unwelcome Ghost
by Adva Fuchs, staff reporter
August heat radiates
through the open windows of the small, simple apartment.
The dry heart all too familiar a feeling,
I address the face staring back at me,
straight lines and dark eyes.
No emotion
as he preciously holds my mother, ironically
to his heart.
He leans back onto the white linens hung to dry
startlingly bronze in comparison
His face, oh so serious,
an actor in more ways than one.
A specter waiting to be discovered,
but a spectator in the lives of others
Too serious to be the man I grew up loving,
perfectly suited to the man the family now ignores.
Your well known smile,
absent as you hold your only daughter? My mother?
Grandfather, why? How can I love a man,
my family despises?
Even the shadows
no longer hold your presence, as if
a ghost.