How she wanted the haunted house to be a gentle porcelain
beneath a kitchen light, damp with love and meadows of nostalgia
for when she would have that perfect whirlwind
of a family again.

Instead, she devoured:
a spider rolling its carnivorous web.
The hungry silk sun always rotating
its axis of fathers, mothers, children, pets,
tied and trapped at the always-set dinner table,
bound with the icy ribbons from this phantasm girl.

When she died at six
against a speeding chrome wall on the driveway edge,
her family couldn’t stay,
the collision echoing, the skittering dent and smack
wherever they were inside her home.

But ghosts can’t leave,
and families kept arriving in decades.
They were prey to her phantom tendrils,
minnows against the ectoplasm jellyfish
weaved through the walls and picture frames.

Her shape started small in supernatural whispers,
a moan at night, a shadow on the bedroom door,
till they were all tied to chairs against
a mountain of midnight candles and empty dishes,
with her blood-crooked form the ghoulish centerpiece.

Everyone was silent
as the little girl wept red tears
that coughed to smoke on the teal tablecloth.
They all knew she just missed
a family of her own.

Featured Image Credit: Longxiang Qian / Pexels