Kelly White Arnold is a mom, writer, teacher, and lover of yoga.  Her work recently appeared or is forthcoming in Walter, theengine (idling, Last Leaves and Ink and Marrow. When she’s not scribbling in notebooks or wrangling teenagers, she’s planning her next tattoo and daydreaming about traveling the world.  Find her on social media  @KArnoldTeaches.

SPECTER

His ghost began haunting me the moment I slipped
the ring on my finger, a shiny Art Deco diamond 
that had belonged to my fiance’s grandmother,
a very fine diamond, my future in-laws assured
as my first love’s apparition looked on curiously
from the corner of the breakfast nook.  That night
I dreamed of him for the first time ever, woke up blushing
amid tangled sheets.  Perused the phone book, found him 
in student housing in Carrboro and called, I told myself, 
for closure.  His voice was the velvet I’d remembered, spoke 
of crowded accommodations, live music, psychedelics. He
was blazing his way through a BA in English, scribbling furiously
fueled by a beatnik desire to embrace the immortality of the page.
I told him I was engaged, wedding date set for June, and that 
I no longer wrote poetry.  He dated a girl from Greensboro, just
down the road from where I was living and would be in town 
to visit her.  Seized by a longing to see his red curls fall lazy 
across blue eyes, I asked if he wanted to meet–coffee, 
of course, gave the address to the red brick abode I shared 
with my then-fiance, the one with black and white checked
bathroom floor and the peephole that cast rainbows across the living
room when the sun shone through it each morning.  Like you,
a redhead, an artist, a pampered only son.  Unlike you, willing 
to stay. The morning of our meeting, my boss called, short-handed.
I didn’t even leave a note.  Years later, I imagine him, my 
phantom first love, knocking on the door to our past
and finding no one home.   

THE DRESS

Cream colored silk that conjures
Grecian goddesses and odes 
on urns.  Sleeveless,light, 
floor length, simple belt
at the waist trimmed in golden
thread–an outfit suitable 
for a bride closer to midlife
than college.  Bare feet, hair
left to cascade loose over
suntanned shoulders.  No veil
 to hide my face this time.  
You look like a princess, 
my toddler niece squealed.
I felt like a queen.