Ghost

The house kept a room colder than the weather. A ghost moved on the stair, pale, more breath than face, a drift of light that did not need the lamp. Doors were shut. Someone had stayed. People who slept there woke with a ghost gift already in the chest, a hush they could not set down. It returns in ghost playing cards that feel light in the hand, in a ghost notebook left open on a landing, in a ghost postcard of the empty step. The room warms when morning comes. The stair does not.