This week we talked over beers,
and my mother told us a ghost story.
We each have  dreams that plague us
again and again, over years,
threatening to creep their way into our realities.
(these are our ghosts.)

My dream was always deep blue and black,
of my body surrounded by water, though I did not drown,
or even gasp.
I was ensnared in moving parts that I had no power over,
held underwater in this churning machine,
not quite a victim but certainly not a hero.
Sunshine was my eventual respite, as was the cushion of my bed,
but the morning always seemed like a fragile gift, then.

My mother dreamed of her teeth, over the years.
She dreamed that they were the traitors inside her,
decaying and betraying,
perhaps cackling as they fell to the floor or
just lying there like bones.

My mother’s delayed trip to the dentist promised her a bridge,
or an implant, but also some calm.  

NPR and This American Life pulled my dream,
my ghost,
from the shadows, too. The story of a diver
ensnared
at 900 feet below the sun,
who would never see it again.

I’ll never be at the bottom of Bushman’s cave,
but, the ghosts say,
you never know.

The smoke sputtered
sizzled
stank as the dying fire brought their furrowed brows to shadow.
The wide skies faded too
curling around the edges of their vision
and the desert rushed
threatening chaos in its white noise
and vacancy.
Two sets of set shoulders and two bare backs
began their night’s work
grey canvases heaving under a weeping sky.
By the time they were done
the rain had stopped.

My anxiety is the dream of a knife
almost a romantic fantasy of something physical that
could cause me the pain or discomfort that really
is just coming from my self
from some thought that I’ve swallowed or stumbled into or onto and now it’s mine
I cannot escape it.

Now it’s my burden and the choices are
to feast on it
or to ignore it until its white noise boiling on the backburner is all but a noose around my neck.

The laughable, socially acceptable third option is of course
the bottle of red or
the little white pill
from the purple bottle
exchanged from the pink slip
handed over by a worried lip.

I lived in a metaphorical house for a while,
called it love and locked the door.
Now, the ghosts leave cold tea and trinkets in the corners of rooms and
memories layer like soot
from a drafty floo; a mid-winter affair with history.
I wander barefoot to disturb the accumulating sorrow,
To stir it into the air and hope for gentlemen callers
like the broken man I’ve tried to find new warmth in.
He is broken where I am bent,
and I am bent most places.

Dignity,  Arrogance, Apathy and Absolution
I feel as if I am singing your ode to your back,
quite silently. I am mocking you,
the girl who knew you best, who
wanted to be the constant entity on your
occasionally slumping shoulders.
Fool.

Yesterday
a friend reminded me of my own story,
a fable of youth, love and
hard won wisdom.

It was meant as a cautionary tale
to a girl standing on the precipice of herself
examining a razor’s edge
and playing a game on silver scales;
balancing catharsis
and longing
and that ******
wisdom.

At the end of the road she lives alone
a too-thin woman in a too-thin blouse
all silver hair and ancient creaking bone
the leaning presence in that leaning house.
Mothers rush their children past with warning
"a lonely victim of our fathers' war"
the widow they call sick with old yearning-
drinks wine and eats dust, her grin like a scar.
Always alone, she hums quiet songs and beats
with tapping toes all while spirits sing songs
to her about our futures, quiet and neat
in sturdy little homes, safe where we belong.
At village funerals, dressed in all lace
she looks prideful, a wide grin on her face.