i watched your warning apparition
consume your earthen eyes.

your warning apparition,
your exposed shadow,
the slowness of your breath.

this spirit inside your chest,
ever expanding,
constricting the blood in your lungs.

pale, skinny face.
you could never get enough sleep,
left your clothes on the floor.

can you breathe now that you’ve left?

has the fog trapped in your ribs dissapated?

has my absence made it easier to fill your lungs with love for someone else?

you told me that you wanted to save me from the emminent warning apparition.
you said it would make you mean.
make you silent.
make me hate every cloud you’d ever seen
because it gave you the wrong idea.

i may have acted impulsively
in dragging my knees through the gravel,
but it was only because
i thought you would see my kneecaps,
scarred and bleeding,
and lift me from the ground.

i can’t walk down congress street.
i see the warning apparition
sitting on the bench where i sat,
watching you sprint to me,
arms spread because you got out of work.

i see it laying in my bed.
the left side.
wishing that just once it would haunt my dreams,
so i could truly feel your sleeping embrace one last time.

i can’t take a shower.
i’m washing your face.
i can’t go to work.
you aren’t home to come back to.

your warning apparition
is not your fault.

nobody asks to be haunted.
not by a truly vengeful ghost.