Panerotica is holding a 100-word drabble contest for Hallowe'en, with the theme of Ghosts. This is the entry I've submitted for it.

It's written as an answer to a poem by Robert Browning, Porphyria’s Lover, which relates how a man strangles his lover with her own hair to preserve forever the single perfect moment in which she loves him. Because I’m some kind of weird masochist, I set myself the challenge of not only making Porphyria’s response 100 words, but also keeping to the same rhyme and meter (iambic tetrameter) Browning used. Please don't laugh too hard, hmmmm?


The rain is cold and hard tonight,
The chill wind tears the sky apart,
Steals away the warmth and light
With fingertips like deadly darts,
Shards of ice that pierce the heart

And I will come through wind and rain
To crouch as ever by your chair.
Are you so sure I felt no pain
When round my neck you twined my hair,
One perfect moment to ensnare?

Our love is pale and dead, but ever
Bound together by death’s knot
I will haunt your dreams forever,
Feed your madness till you rot.
May God forgive you, I will not.