Untitled (Ghost)
The cherry trees bend over and are shedding,
On the old road where all that passed are dead,
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
This early May morn when there is none to wed.
The Cherry Trees by Edward Thomas
i.
It is snowing on a field, on a vast, quiet field. The scarf flies away, chased by the wind, winged, and it is caught sometimes later by an empty elm-bough-a splash of yellow in a wide gloom, silence. Snow falls onto her shoulder and touches her bare neck. It thaws. Her eyes look away.
She lays her fingers onto the stone and tries to wipe the snow off, but it keeps getting into everywhere and keeps falling. It veils air all around, Ginny kneels down and trembles in her winter-robes and her lips make out hollow words. Her hands are raw and red. You can't see the intaglio letters anymore-except the faint corner of the H.
ii.
She always thinks there is someone following her.
Because the resonates of her footsteps are deep and crisp, and by the time she hears her own echoes, she thinks there is someone behind me, if I turn right now, there will be someone walking behind me. She never does. She doesn't know exactly, if it is fear of the dark or the fear of fear, but her back tingles and straightens whenever she walks alone, followed by blackbirds and wispy clatters of high heels.
She takes walks when she feel like it and the weather's nice, and sometimes she won't care and will walk in the rain. But when she gets home, she flings herself on her bed and thinks what her life would feel like if Hermione hadn't been killed.
iii.
Ginny walks down the aisles of Flourish and Blotts, looking for the second edition of _Transfiguration, Metamorphosis, and Anthropomorphosis of Fauves_ and she wonders why she feels like a ghost sometimes. This minute and this second, a ghoulish thing of another world, pale and white and yellowy in the eyes like a canine, and maybe if she wanted to, she can go right through the brick wall of the Leaky Cauldron.
Because you know, she can't think properly, she can't even kiss anymore. She realizes as her lips touch with that of the boy in front of her-what was his name again?-and her tongue touches his lip, and all she can think of is how cold it is.
A bit like Tom.
iiii.
She doesn't care.
Her mother tells her that she can't live like this-like some blind mouse in a maze-but Ginny doesn't think she can do much about it anyway, but still, she doesn't like to see her mother worry. It just haven't been easy for her after the war.
But the air around her is empty, so empty that it feels like a vacuum-since the war started like how it always start, with a righteous eagerness, a sort of justified fascination, but soon collapses into something more barren, more pointless-and instead of her breathing from the air, the air sucks breaths from her, and she might one day choke on her conscience or something.
But it's not like she cares.
iiiii.
She stands in front of the mirror and ties up her hair with a yellow band, she looks at herself, seeing the toll of age and stress and sunlight. The price of wisdom, they say, but that's funny because she feels neither wiser nor older. All she can think of is how unbeautiful she is, how thin her skin is, much more hollow her eyes are.
The sun rises today, turns yellow on its high-course, and then falls into the mountains. Ginny thinks, another day. Another day.