Goldsworthy

NYCM Rhyming Story Competition 2023

Round 2: Ghost Story (1st Place)

She doesn't spare a backward glance

nor bid the dusty bus goodbye

but sets out through the red expanse

beneath an empty cyan sky

until she spies the criss-cross sweep

of asphalt fossils baked in clay--

The broken, black half-buried heaps

of streets on which she used to play.

She'd argued there was little sense

In going home, now home was gone.

But now she's here there's no pretence-

she knows she stayed away too long.

And as the Pilbara sun descends,

the shadows snake through ochre glow

and raise unwelcome ghosts of friends

abandoned by her long ago.

The rusting graveyard of her town

is graced by scarlet blooms of Sturt.

She kneels among the desert peas

and weeps upon the hot red dirt.

And while she weeps the sunset sinks,

unveils the stars, then fades away.

It drains the Mulla-Mulla pinks

'til all that's left is lifeless grey.

Too dark for pitching proper swag

but, listless and in need of rest,

she crawls inside her sleeping bag

and counting stars, she tries her best

to push away the creeping fear

that, while the night is still and warm,

the heavy static-crackling air

is threatening a summer storm.

Perhaps that's why she hears no sound

of wildlife rustle in the brush?

Just silent stillness all around,

and in that deep, unnatural hush,

imagination draws her mind

back down an old Bungarra trail

to painful secrets left behind

and laid to rest, with Abigail.

They'd gone where they weren't meant to go:

out playing by the flooded creek.

And when she'd pushed her in the flow,

her little sister proved too weak.

She couldn’t save her, though she tried;

she reached the struggling girl too late.

And when she fled back home, she lied

about the cause of Abi's fate.

Whenever asked she always swore

that Abigail had swum alone,

'til driven by the guilt she bore

she burned the bridges with her home.

And in the intervening years

she learned the iron mine shut down.

She felt the sting of burning tears

unloosed for old Goldsworthy town.

A sudden rumble in the air

Now shocks her back to present day.

Her aching, bloodied feet are bare.

Her camp's a half-night's hike away.

Did she walk here in her sleep?

She can't remember passing out

and yet she's standing in the creek

Now dry as bone from years of drought.

The rumbling sky is filled with scents

of mingled petrichor and rust.

Then twenty years of rain descend

upon the desiccated dust.

Now suddenly she's toppled prone.

She’s flailing in the flowing mud!

She hits her head on rain-slick stone.

…She makes it slicker with her blood.

The storm that briefly brought the rains

is borne away by breaking day.

Colours paint the ancient plains

and saturate the dreary grey.

Now Abigail is very glad

her sister has come home to play.

The loneliness had made her sad,

but this time she won’t run away...