Two Wraiths I Have Been Today by Kate Garrett

i. the lady in white

she’s haunted bedsits / box rooms / half a dozen

semi-detached houses—all the places grief follows

when you have no ancestral home, no grey stone

corridors to roam, wailing at guests in bedchambers.

you’ll see her before you hear her: tears make moon-

stones of her cheeks in the lamplight, soften unfocused

eyes with lids like velvet curtains dyed with smudged

mascara. tonight she looked at her daughter, couldn’t

reach out to hold her—remembered long weeks lying still,

growing a small seed from seasickness, fighting the urge

to throw herself down the stairs – not some romantic spiral

descent – just one flight, then another, to get the job done.

she remembers and she weeps. if you see her, say a prayer

for her, tell her it will be ok, offer comfort—even if it

won’t change a thing; even if she looks straight through you.

ii. the lady in red

a translucent wisp of cherry boots

in a gust of wind around the rusted

carcass of a car in a layby; the hint

of a dianthus dress in the corner

of your room, in the only motel

with vacancies on a Friday in June.

all she wants is blood – manifests

wine-dark flashes night after night

thrusts the unseen into plain sight.

she was left fading, a rag in the rain—

after so long waiting is weaponised.

if you see her, it’s already too late.

Kate Garrett is the editor of Three Drops from a Cauldron, Picaroon Poetry, and Bonnie's Crew, and her own writing is widely published. Born in rural southern Ohio, she moved to the UK in 1999, where she still lives in Sheffield with her husband, five children, and a sleepy cat.  Her first full-length poetry collection, The saint of milk and flames, will be published in April 2019 and is available for preorder now from Rhythm & Bones Press.