His heart was yours.
They  thought so too.

It's the love you find.
In old haunted rooms.

Only now he's not getting through.
There's something harrowing.

About this haunting.
As everybody screams.

All the broken promises.
Hindered by regrets.

Still he haunts.
Your lonely heart.

As goosebumps spring.
Against your neck.

Wondering if it was something you did.
Wondering  if it was something you said.

Your met with silence.
As it turns violent.

As an echo.
Is heard of him crying.

Years go by.
Without words unspoken.

Till he becomes a ghost,
In the graveyard of your hopes.

You used to be bold

Now you just sit there and mourn and you weep
Unfulfilled
Hasn't enough of your time been lost?
Eaten up by mites, clearly mightier than you
And ghosts
Hovering over your shoulder
Greying your eyes and smothering your heart
And for what?
Because of how unlucky you once were?
Or how you refused luck as it felt unknown


I'll say

It's easy to linger in the same halls
Cozy to not have to master
The strength to look up
Up there
Where you haven't been before
You don't know what the weather's like

Scary to think the wind could be stronger
Than your will to survive

like the earth,
i orbit and observe—
sunshine and ghosts,
moonlit secrets put to sleep
in mornings shadowed
by entities of me.

where i roar not loud enough to be heard,
only whispered—
a metaphysical battle of words.

asleep and awake at the same time,
a cosmic shroud,
a star without shine.

It's a clockwork — like the dances of phantoms in the hallways, in the glow of lights through the window at night. I stared like a burglar from afar, It's the fear and anger, that's keeping me restless — a reminder that I should sleep with one eye open, meager, furiously shame.

I understand how stubborn they are rewriting the history, as I try to recollect, catching trails like they were footsteps. Love is all they worship from the beginning of time, thus it crumbles them to dust.

Are they second - hand embarrassed? If I couldn't see the ghosts and shadows lingering everywhere, yet here I am nestled to all that fairy tale, for a momentary, and still plotting the sweetest lullaby. Did they haunt you too? as if it were a chunk to the armour or it counterfeits them?

the skulls of what may
the ghastly figures
the ghosts of hesitant musings
the salvation that never needed me
the illuminations filling
the distant ring of dying bells
the lover asleep in wheat fields
the apparitions of the what-ifs
suddenly the world is all but what it is
a ghostlike vision enfolding as an illusion
believe so harshly it destroys to change
believe in me so harshly you cannot stand
amidst the glory.
the heavy locks are being changed,
we are the ghosts of what may.

I watch the traffic through cigarette smoke,
That dances with sighs frosted by winter,
Released into the cold, electric air
By strangers standing close, yet all alone.

And through the blurry neon reflections,
Cast on windows adorned with icicles,
Where the colors bleed along frozen panes,
Something that shouldn’t be there caught my eye.

I thought I saw your shape form in the glass,
But ghosts don’t walk beneath the city lights,
Waiting for someone to follow behind
And lead them through forgotten memories.

Yet no one turns as the traffic drones on,
As I leave to light one more cigarette
And walk by the glass where you might have been,
Where my ghost joins yours in the cold window.
©️2025 David Cornetta

A coffee swells in waxy skin
The city squints through windowed glare
She’s creased inside a wrinkled dress
Her ghost hangs limp in laundered air

A payphone rang, one ghost, one ring.
No one moved. We all just knew.
Outside, a siren tried to sew
threading pain through morning’s bruise

Fluorescent hum, a migraned god.
My coat spins slow behind the glass.
Zipper beats like trapped bird wing.
A sock grins dumb from wire racks.

This street is lined with yellow stain,
lights too bright for folks this small.
I sipped, I burned, I thought her name,
then let it drift in urban sprawl.

The dryer stops. A broken chime.
Just silence, stretching like a neck.
I crack, not loud. Just wide enough
to feel the break beneath my breath.

She’s someone else’s Sunday now
in fresh-washed light, her hair tucked neat
Vanilla steam and honeyed bread
laughing soft in kitchen's heat.

Here my soles are worn too thin
A half-full cup, a sleepless eye,
no grace, no hand to lift away,
this curb, this wind, this grayer sky.

And where I am, that’s all there is.
No turning arc. No healing bend.
But I’ll get up. I’ll fold. I’ll walk.
And maybe that’s enough to mend.

The veiled moon emits
the strangest obscure light.
Silently awakening
the secret world of my dark delights.
Yet the tide twinkles,
blinding bright.
On the ancient shore
of my mind tonight.
Mysterious memories swirl
that have haunted me before.
As a dark euphoria sedates my core.
In the center of my soul,
exists a vaulted door.
Where the ghosts of the heart reside.
To go inside,
exposes every secret you ache to confide.
Whoever told me there is no magic
lied to my seeing, searching eyes.
The night is silent, can you hear it....
The world's dark veined ecstasies,
sustain my sparkling startled spirit.

I tended a garden once,
behind walls too low,
in a pasture too wide.

The vines reached for strangers
with reckless kindness,
begging to be named beautiful.

You came with smoke clinging to your sleeves,
promises falling from your mouth,
and I, fool that I was,
welcomed you.

With greedy hands, you plucked petals,
stepped on seeds meant for tomorrow,
your breath embers against my harvest.

The skies darkened.
The rivers boiled.
The orchard withered from root to leaf.

And there I stood,
ash stuck to my skin,
silence heavier than stone.

I stayed to bury what you left behind:
The wilted vines,
the broken promises,
the ruined songs.

From the shattered soil,
I built a citadel from broken things.
It stands, heavy and hollow,
Strong enough for silence to live inside.

I am no longer waiting
for careless hands to stumble upon me.
I do not open gates for ghosts.
I hope their hands break before they knock.