The Ghosts who pined for kisses

From where I stand I see their silent-eyed
and ghost-like faces through the stained-glass panes
staring at me, a look that fades and wanes
by memory held, by reasoning denied.

I knew about the sisters full of life
who all those years had lived here long ago,
whose parents sheltered them from pain and woe
and any man out there to find a wife.

No suitor was encouraged in pursuit
or enter gardens where the roses grew
in long straight rows, no men who ever knew
their inner garden with their secret fruit.

Still in old age they could be seen about
ripened , white-haired, with aching backs bent low,
their lives construed, and with a fading glow
their former beauty prone to peter out.

One day in May, they finally walked out
and side by side they left, as if one whole.
A tremor in the landscape of their soul
that, as they died, blew all the candles out.

So many nights in May I see them still
across the window, searching for the passion
they never found in life. I feel the chill
and shiver at their faces turning ashen.

I light a candle , pray for both their souls,
their sense of loss for what they had been missing:
the love of men, the laughter of a child,
the scent of passion in the thrall of kissing.