Two hundred years old if she’s a day
but a beauty rare as golden cobwebs.
Face a pale the other side of moonlight
and lips stained mauve, fingernails blood red.
White dress steers her like a sail
through windless corridors.
When was death ever so alive.
Into my room at 3 a.m.,
she flits from dresser mirror
to curtain fold to ceiling.
My body chilled by fascination,
brief glimpses of her
substitute for heartbeats
