Play inside my head
The songs I used to know
The things I used to dance to
Oh so long ago

Take my hand in yours
Lead me to the floor
Deserted, all alone
Can we dance once more?

Just the ghost of a memory
Of all the things we used to be
Beckoning me tearfully
To dance with him in a cemetery

We’re dancing in a cemetery
Where the dreams we lost are dead and buried
A veiled asylum for the brokenhearted
Where we find our sanctuary

With every twirl the memories come
Memories I thought for sure I had lost
Drowning me in a tidal wave
So monstrous that I’m all but crushed

Dancing with the past
It’s a deadly game I’m playing
Flirting with insanity
Remembering what I should be forgetting

This ghost is just an artifice
A reminder of what could have been
In earnest I try to leave him
But then he spins me in again

Cold hands encircle my fingers
This ghost is both an enemy and friend
Companion and adversary
That will haunt me until the end

A lethal embrace
An intoxicated kiss
His hand on my waist
His mouth to my lips

I hunger for his affection
I desire his embrace
Why is the one thing I can't have
The only thing I want to chase?

Triple step, triple step
Rock step then repeat
I learned these steps so long ago
Yet I could execute them in my sleep

He shakes my resolve
With each passing step
He, a puppeteer with the strings
I, a dazed marionette

We sing in hoarse whispers
The songs that we once called our own
His voice mingles with mine, discordant
The haunting harmony of inexact tone

This enticing lethal dance
Is sucking the life out of me
I have to let go of his hands
And say goodbye to everything

The shovel in my shaking grasp
I dig a multifaceted grave
And lovingly lay these memories there
As it begins to rain

My eyes fill up and overflow
In weak emulation of the rain
With one last look I turn my back
And begin to walk away

The chill sets in
And the wind howls through
Bringing with it the fear
That I’m losing you

Though the echoes of past time
Continue to reverberate
I refuse to let their ring
Consume me or intimidate

I keep placing my feet
One in front of the other
But I will never forget
What’s buried six feet under

If someone were to follow
My footprints in the grass
They would find a gravestone
With an unusual epitaph

This is the epitaph
Etched across the tombstone:
“Here lies the girl who danced with the ghost
Of all she used to know”