Thirty Days Of Julia: Day Nineteen

She read aloud her ghost story. A tale
of two brothers at a country hotel.
Of a vagrant who cadged a pint of beer
in the local pub. Mouth full of broken
teeth, like a desecrated grave. His yarns
about the manor house, where a woman
filled pages with automatic writing.
A lipstick and powder old maid, whose words
bent the logic of dreams into something
more solid. As the plotline meandered,
the final reveal of the drunk vagrant's
ear-ring was a motif of dishonoured
blood lines. What the fuck it meant was beside
the point. It has haunted me thirty years.