The Ghost By The Schoolyard

I saw her through the window on Sunday afternoon, walking past the schoolyard. Maybe fourteen years old, a little tall, a little thin. Dressed in a black t shirt, blue denim pedal pushers and Keds high tops that looked brand new. Brown hair in a pony tail. Too much eye liner, and a cigarette between the fingers of her left hand. She stopped by the tree directly across from my window, bent down and took a handful of dirt and rubbed it across the rubber toes of her sneakers. The last time I saw someone do that I wasn't much older than her.

I knew right away she wasn't alive. Just a reflection of someone who used to be. I thought of the world her eyes were seeing, a world where Ike was president and tv was black and white. A world where she lay in her bed at night with her white plastic transistor radio under her pillow, listening to Allan Freed and Murray The K on WINS 1010. A world where the corner candy store sold Lucy's for two cents apiece, either Marlboro or Newport. A world where music came on 45 singles, one song on each side. Where kids took the A Train to Rockaway Beach and danced in the sand to Connie Francis and Sandra Dee.

I don't know who you are or why you're here, girl. But trust me, go to the light, right now. This minute, this second. If you came back now you'd be my age, with aches and pains and disappointments that you just don't need. Go now and be happy, darlin'.