The Spectre

Without fail she appears, veiled and elegant, at the closing stages
of spring. Drifting effortlessly upon the limber May grass with a
delicacy transcending the fragility of nature, she wanders past as an
apparition who has visited my forlorn realm to trouble my mind like a
wasp in the summer heat or an anxious mantra in a winter's morgue. I am
always compelled to stare, intensely but apprehensively, at her
celestial form as it floats by and enlightens my soul, savouring the
few seconds that she is near, until she vanishes before my eyes! Yes,
in those early days both my fear and my anxiety were unfathomably
summoned to convene with an incomprehensible adoration for this divine
ghost, with an indescribable love for a phantom too beautiful for the
inhabitable abode that is earth, and with a sacred worship for a soul
too pure for an inadequate world.
At midnight every day for an entire season, and every season for what
may have been an eternity, out of nowhere she emerges. She paces by,
dressed in purest white, a semi-transparent veil shrouding the details
of her expression, allowing only mere glimpses of her faultless
features. She walks past the window, permitting me only a few seconds
to observe her splendour, only a brief moment to decipher the untainted
lucent skin and the embodied lament this angel displays. Although to
call her angelic would surely not do justice in describing her
perfection, in elucidating to an impartial acquaintance the
unattainably precise arch of her neck, or the subtle recline of her
frail brow. I could not easily describe how this lady pervades my
essence, or how I watch on with the disbelief of a fallen deity. No
words could make clear the pure incandescence of this unworldly being,
just as they could not describe the prominent yet delicate fragility of
her sorrowful cheekbones. Her locks of hair remain perplexingly still
as the breeze afflicts her dress; they stay white and unpolluted,
glowing alluringly with her virtuous luminescence. The garden through
which she walks is spectrally altered when she is in attendance; as if
nature itself is accommodating her elegance, or the gods themselves
wish to offer me the gift of an ideal landscape, a vision of untainted
artistry.
And there I stand, witnessing the garden light up gloriously every
midnight of summer. I wait there until she arrives, and leave only when
she has gone. Sitting alone in the dark, I find that my gaze is fixed
entirely upon this iridescent vision. I watch on in awe through the old
window, the rotten oak that holds the pane framing this mesmerising and
radiant scene.

For years I have watched her in silence, and gradually I fell in love
with her mournful soul. I yearned to comfort the glimmering
vulnerability that she displayed or consol the desperation exhibited in
her gentle steps. I became more and more dependant on seeing her form
before I slept, as if we were caught in a spiritual symbiosis; I watch,
and in reciprocation, she exists!
Last summer I found that I could no longer keep silent. I eagerly
attempted to call out to her, yet my efforts were in vain. I remained
rooted behind my glass shelter, too afraid that if I were to go outside
then she may not materialise. No more did I hold the curse of fearful
anxiety within my heart, yet at first all I could muster was a pitiful
whisper in uneasy trepidation. However, with each passing night my
confidence grew, until by the end of last summer I was screaming out,
professing my love with pathetic desperation and weeping from the scars
of eternal torment. With torturous futility I longed to be near her,
longed to hold her, and decayed every night that my desperate pleas
were to no avail. Yet the lady to whom my heart belonged did not react
to my perpetual declarations, no matter how affirmatively I spoke, my
shrieks were in vain.

Tonight is the first night that she has responded, turned her head and
focused her eyes to meet my gaze. But after an initial elation my heart
has started to wane, and my eyes are now fraught with fearful tears. It
is with a painful and blood-curdling horror, with paralysing and
debilitating anguish, that I now look deep into her heart, into her
true soul - and see only darkness.