Ghost are real
I know because I’m haunted
By his laugh and the way it sounded over coffee in the morning
And he’s still laughing now,
At someone, at something
But I’ll never know for sure if he’s laughing at me
It’s all there is,
All I know
And it follows me like a story,
Like a shadow that little Wendy decided to sew to my shoes
It’s loudest by the windows
And hardest to hear from the stairs,
But it’s always there.
Ghosts are real,
I know, because it’s permanent
Like the burn from that cigarette he dropped on my kitchen floor
He was aiming for the waste basket but hey, nobody’s perfect
And it’s always there.
Even if other things aren’t.
That promise of permanence broke
Like glass and that teacup
With flowers and a smile to hold on to
And I thought I was lucky for keeping my distance
Because in the end everything breaks
And I knew it and he proved it
But now I can’t let go,
Of photographs and voices that keep asking if my blues are what caused the shatter
But are they my voices or his
Blues; that creature I carry,
That thing I gave into the instant he said that blue looked good on me,
And I tore myself in half
Because all I wanted was to be something good.
But blue is a brick wall
And my hands bled long before that wall came down.
Ghosts are real.
I know, because that wall is still there
And I thought that by now I’d have forgotten but something keeps reminding me,
And they’re not my thoughts,
Because who am I if this is how I think,
No,
ghosts are real and I know because he’s still whispering in my ear.
So he laughs, and sometimes it’s a question
But mine or his
And who knows the answer
And has anyone heard the question?
Because I know that he’s asking one
But all I can hear is the way his head would tilt to the left when he didn’t know
And once upon a time, all my dreams came true and he decided to make me the answer,
He decided to make me his answer
But god help me, I never wanted to be the answer to silence.
Pins are always dropping
And I’ve learned to watch where I walk --
He taught me what it felt like to get stuck.
So now I have all these lessons
And these wounds and all these noises
Things he gave me and left me because in another life I had wanted them
Ghosts aren’t real.
They don’t need to be.
