Siren

I heard once
that across the Red River,
thirty miles south of where
the thornbushes grow wild into a
solid wall, there is a ghost town
in the valley surrounded by mountains.
A ghost town in ruins, each house
missing a roof or a wall, sometimes
just stripped down to its foundation,
and an impermeable layer of black
smog hanging around its streets. Some
people say it was ravaged in the war
a few years back, and some say that
everyone just left one day, and the
still-lit empty houses tore themselves
apart in their loneliness.

One stayed behind.
A small girl in a blue dress that has
grown grayish and dirty with
too much wear, and long,
ash-colored hair that covers her face.
They say if you're very quiet,
and very still, she'll approach you,
tilting her head back to let her
hair slide back off her face. Her eyes
are wide and pupilless, deep and white
and so large they threaten to swallow
her face whole, and she smiles simply
and says in a small voice: "Listen,
traveler, can I sing you a song?"
And if you refuse, she will follow
you all the way to the mountains,
empty eyes pleading, asking
over and over and over,
her voice echoing in your ears
long after you leave.

But I've been told that that one day,
a man came to that town
with no baggage and no destination,
and he leaned up against a ruined wall,
waiting for her. And when he was asked,
he smiled back, a bright smile
that lit his gaunt, sunken face. "Please."

Her voice is the center of the sun,
the hot core pouring from her lips
and covering the entire valley
in melted light, and it paralyzes
his every nerve. At first, it is just
tiny fingers drumming up his
spine as each blood vessel vibrates
to her song, the sharps and flats
of a tune vaguely familiar, but
lost somewhere in his memory,
and then it is a numbness sweeping
through his limbs, heart, and mind
until he is detached from his body.
They say she'll be young, they'll both be
young, as long as she keeps singing,
so her song keeps going, repeating,
a little different each time she reaches
the refrain, until her voice breaks
in her throat. She opens her mouth
wide to begin again, only to swallow
cold, empty air.