Ghost 4

Imagine perfection lowered into earth, in silk skin, with no barriers or boundaries, but flawed, female, sulky, full of jokes! Imagine a latter-day Venus that could sit so solidly, with such an effervescent and mysterious beauty that it would take your breath away. How often have I dreamed in nights that I could see it again, her face, framed in brown hair that fell prettily in her eyes, her lips, her eyes a quiet blue. Her arms sturdy, her mouth laughing, her waist I yearned to grasp, slip an arm around. All that was beautiful in sixteen, all that was wicked, laughing, joyful, glooming and sad in a woman, in her, brought to life in her. She was a phantom that passes, she was the dream of beauty that disperses.

Wrapped in a uniform, in the quiet and commonplace uniforms of nineteen ninety one. A dark, blood-red jersey she would wear in lowering autumn afternoons, everything else black and comfortable. Outside, of course, the air bloomed, welcomed her, even the dark rainclouds wept, comforted her. The broiling smokes of autumn were her companion.

Her red lips, that spoke evil, that told jokes! Her brown hair and disgruntlement! Her sleeps in Sunday night silence. As she laughed like a débutante in the prefect's room, as she stalked, affronted, late for another class, through the corridors, loved and loving, sweet-lipped in sour glances.

I first saw her in the Modern Studies class, which was quiet and pastel-shaded with

it's Venetian blinds and sunlight slanting on the bare back wall. There were groups of brown school tables...