Ghost

Silent,
Slipping inside out, so as not to face me,
You fade and cool
Like steam sapped dry by an icy draft.
Nothing remains of you but ghosts pacing in the distance
Unaware, as if on a different plane.

I find myself murmuring the same cliché’s,
The pep-talks of a clinched-jaw survivor,
While sucking up metal from the cold cell around me,
And wrapping it around my vertebrae.

I stare unblinking until blue resigns itself to grey,
As I endeavor to harden.

How many times must I transition…
Shed metal for flesh to be a woman for a man,
Only to again make of myself a machine
When that man is for himself?

Phase or precipice of decline, who can say?

Only you,
But you are silent.