Just a Ghost - Electric Bard

A timber creaks above the ceiling rose A phantom slipper dragging as it goes A porcelain saucer rings beside the zinc While bitter dregs of tea congeal and sink I test the runner with a stealthy toe To dodge the warped board crying down below Cohabitating with an unseen guest Who never pauses to permit the house to rest Glimpsing an overcoat slipping around the door jamb Before the cupboards inexplicably shudder and slam Unsure if a stranger inhabits the mortar and lath Or memory haunting an obsolete path We Trace The Same Axis Across The Parquet And Barter The Night For A Pallid Decay Two stubborn survivors who never align Yet tether their dread to a singular line Are you there? Or just a ghost in the air? I wedge the larder door a fraction unsealed To hear what the hush of the night has revealed A current of draft tips the calico drape Suggesting the hem of a hovering shape Decades accrued in the mortar and beam Obscuring the divide in the domestic scheme Did you vanish out front when the gravel was damp Or linger upstairs by the paraffin lamp? Glimpsing an overcoat slipping around the door jamb Before the cupboards inexplicably shudder and slam Unsure if a stranger inhabits the mortar and lath Or memory haunting an obsolete path We Trace The Same Axis Across The Parquet And Barter The Night For A Pallid Decay Two stubborn survivors who never align Yet tether their dread to a singular line Are you there? Or just a ghost in the air? If I summon your name through the hollow stairwell Will an answer erupt or an emptiness dwell? I lay out two spoons on the linen each night Refusing to strike up the gas for a light The rooms keep the residue left in the chest When grief settles in as a permanent guest We Trace The Same Axis Across The Parquet And Barter The Night For A Pallid Decay Two stubborn survivors who never align Yet tether their dread to a singular line Are you there? Or just a ghost in the air? Are you there? Or just a ghost in the air?