Sometimes when I am home alone
In the hazy heat of the afternoon
And the house is quiet
With its little creaks and groans
And my mind is stripped
Of all the other noise that might help it forget,
I smile instead,
And I turn on some soft music that echoes through the emptiness
With tender chords
And I take a walk around my empty house
And say hello to your ghosts.

The time you stood in your black skirt by my counter
And leaned on the chair.
I say hello to each of you,
Smile my love into your eyes
That aren't there.
If someone were to see me
Sitting on the couch
Holding hands that aren't there
Smiling sadly
Saying
"It's okay."
They'd probably think I was mad.

But sometimes
When no one's around
I like to say hello to all the times
I never could have loved you more.
I like to let my flashbacks,
The little slices of you that settled here
When my love of you shattered your memory and scattered you all about my life
In little sharp shards,
I like to let them exist completely
Like one film strip laid over another
So that two people
Who never met
Could seem to stand
Close together.

You are my permanent wound,
My favorite scar.
My love,
You live in my life with me.
And sometimes I stop,
And say hello to you.
Lay on my rose patterned rug
Up in my room
Right where we laid the first time you put your arms around me
And laughed at me for crying at Rent.
Look in the mirror where you fixed my hair
And let myself see you behind me
Instead of pretending you're not always there
Anyway.

Darling,
That's just the way things are.
You live in my life with me.
Sometimes I wonder if you feel a little tickle in your mind
When I do this,
When I say hello and look at you like you're my world
Because really
Why pretend
That you're not all over it
All in it
All around it
All the time?
When there you are
At my kitchen counter in your black skirt,
Leaning on my old chair,
Sitting on my couch about to give me a gift,
Dancing in my pointe shoes trying not to fall,
Laying on my bedroom floor,
Or in the mirror right behind me.
How can I always pretend that I am alone
When you don't leave?

I never want you to.
I am grateful for your little ghosts,
Film reels that play mere seconds on repeat,
Faded and scratched,
A little pale compared to the world around them.
They are my home.
After all this, they are finally home to me.

So sometimes when I'm all alone,
I like to thank them,
And say hello to the girl I loved
As she was when I first loved her.
Seeing you is like falling into bed after a long day of doing good-
Comforting, perfect...peaceful.
The little twinge of loss is there, but it just makes it sweeter,
Because those moments
Permanently painted over the little spots in my house
That I used to avoid,
And then rush through brazenly,
Angry that they still felt rough and sore,
That I finally stopped to look at
Had a good cry over,
And said hello to
And felt at home...
Those moments wouldn't mean as much
If they weren't gone forever.

I guess in the end
None of us really have that much time
Do we?