Lost Girls' Sestina
by Wasuremono

The people outside spoke of a "Rosemary girl,"
But all Ana has seen in the house is dust,
Covering things the family has forgotten:
Furniture, toys, relics of the Rosemary
family, now left as offerings to the ghosts.
In every room, there is a strange and distant melody.

Finding the piano makes clear the melody:
The notes are plinking, hesitant, as if played by a girl 
Just learning, or by a slowly fading ghost. 
The keys are shiny, free of the dust
That otherwise chokes the house of Rosemary.
Ana can tell this piano has not been forgotten.

Who, she suspects, has been forgotten
Is the child who tries still to play her melody.
The things left behind by the Rosemary
family are toys that might have belonged to a girl,
Treasured possessions now as worthless as dust. 
Is it any wonder she has lingered as a ghost?

It is easy, after all, for girls to become ghosts.
Ana knows how quickly she could be forgotten,
How easily her dreams could shatter into dust. 
She recalls, helplessly, the sweet melodies
Her mother used to sing when Ana was a little girl --
And her mother's kitchen, smelling of rosemary.

In its deathly solitude, the Rosemary
House cannot help but conjure for Ana other ghosts:
The house empty without her mother, and the girls
In Magicant, strangely happy in their forgotten
City, ensnared by a half-remembered melody
And floating on clouds of glittering dust. 

All the glitter in Magicant was nothing more than dust. 
Above it all, in her shining tower, rose Mary,
Seeking after that long-lost melody,
As beautiful and helpless as a ghost.
Ana shudders to think of how many have been forgotten,
At this fate that seems only natural for a girl.

She is only a girl, after all, and cannot help her fear. The Rosemary
House dwindles behind her: its choking dust, its cackling ghosts. 
Yet at nights, half-hoping it forgotten, she still shivers at the melody.