Ghost on Blue Heron Street

He wasn’t a real ghost, for he had substance and form.

He waited for me each morning at the intersection of Sea Breeze and Blue Heron. He waited, but he never spoke.

He was a tragedy in silence. Whenever I neared the intersection on a morning walk, I always slowed and nodded. He stared through me unable to share a deep, stifling grief I did not understand.

The only thing left of the house was a broken cinderblock outline worn to a nub by time and ravenous winds and rising tides. Each morning as I walked past him with my head at half-mast sharing his grief, I often peered at the home’s skeleton and wondered.

Was there laughter here once? Did he hold a sweetheart tightly each night long ago beneath a marsh moon in this house beside the sea? Did they share dreams? Did she kiss him longingly beneath golden sunsets?

He never spoke of these matters, but I read the sadness in his expressions. Nothing would cheer him. He had lost the will to continue, and all that was left was this lonely loyalty at the intersection of Blue Heron and Sea Breeze where he stood each day staring at the ruins of his house.

One night, driving home in a battering rain with the tides rising and panic in the wind, my headlights hit him full face. He never budged or acknowledged the interruption. Dripping beneath heaven’s deluge, he stood alone, moss dripping off his limbs.

“Please! Come home with me for one night. Rest and dry your clothes,” I implored, but he resisted. Perhaps, he thought, she might return on this very night. He could not leave. He would not leave.

He wasn’t a real ghost, for he had substance and form.

Still, I still greet him to this day on my morning walks. But I fear that loneliness has forever calcified his heart.

And so it does to us all.
And so it does to us all.

David R. Denny
visions501@gmail.com