[  ] We didn’t date,
[  ] Yet you tell people we did.
[  ] We hardly even talked,
[  ] yet you act like we spent our lives together
[  ] As if i left without a word
[  ] Except there were words
[  ] You just didn’t listen.

[  ] Now you ask them why I left,
[  ] like there was something to leave to begin with.
[  ] Like I held your hand, whispered promises,
[  ] let you in—
[  ] when all I did was exist near you.

[  ] You get your friends to interrogate me,
[  ] like I owe them answers.
[  ] Like I owe you anything at all.
[  ] They ask what happened,
[  ] why I “broke your heart,”
[  ] but I didn’t realize you had given it away to begin with.

[  ] You follow me through halls,
[  ] a shadow I never asked for.
[  ] Standing just close enough to remind me
[  ] that you don’t know how to let go.
[  ] That you can’t take silence as an answer.

[  ] And when I talk to my friends,
[  ] there you are, lingering,
[  ] Like a shadow creeping into spaces where you were never meant to be.
[  ]  A ghost desperate to haunt something that was never yours.

[  ] It’s almost funny,
[  ] how someone I barely knew
[  ] can’t seem to untangle themselves from me.
[  ] How someone I never loved
[  ] Plays the victim in a story that was never finished to begin with.

I walk through the halls
like a forgotten ghost
everyone looks through me
like they can't see me
but to be honest
it's better if they don't see me
because when they do
the things they say
oh, the things they say
hurt like a knife to the chest
the pounding of my heart
spills the blood of anger
and seeping sadness
and splatters on the walls

Open doors, yet stuck inside.
Come and go, I don't care.
But the pain,
an unknown ache in me
weighs heavy.

Like a ghost wandering lost,
I move with invisible wound.
Some days it hits harder,
Just like last night.
Just like today.

This lonely, silent hollow ache,
I don't know why I push everyone away.
It’s just another day.

I can't relate, I can't explain.
Nothing feels real outside,
Nothing makes sense inside,
It's heavy.

I wish I could figure it out.

I don't owe my soul to the boogeyman
or a seductress in a wild bikini  
just a loner with a peekaboo mind  
with a jalopy as my chariot
a shop full of books  
and my cat Mr. Thingamabob  
but the air is clean
and the conversations are free  
if you will only try to communicate
with a ghost in aisle three

The shadow in the mirror reminds me not of myself but of my father.
He stands behind my mother’s chair like an advisor to the queen.
He does not poison her mind or plan treason against her throne.
Her tyranny extends to the invisible shackles on his long-broken mind.

The ghost in the mirror reminds me not of myself but of my brother.
Though he has died, he never passed on to the better place he deserves.
His phantom lingers in my mind, trying to reach out and touch this plane.
He can’t feel the tender dew on the soft grass unless he uses my hands.

The witch in the mirror reminds me not of myself but of my sister.
Though she has left the inner coven, she is still trapped under her oath.
Her spells of cord-cutting and separation can only do so much against it.
As her mistress sleeps, her work to free herself from her bond does not stop.

The monster in the mirror reminds me not of myself but of my mother.
She controls our movements like a puppet on a string, never stopping.
There is no freedom to reign over my or my family’s actions but hers.
Her little marionettes may never break free from the suffering they endure.

Anger lingers here.
Like a ghost,
She haunts these hallways.

Anger lingers here.
Like a specter,
She hides in the shadows.

Anger lingers here.
Like a poltergeist,
She possesses my limbs.

Anger lingers here.
Like a phantom,
She screams in the dead of night.

Anger lingers here.
Like a wraith,
She whispers in the silence.

Anger lingers here.
Like a shade,
She wanders aimlessly.

Anger lingers here.
Like a spirit.
She must be set free.

I believe in saying things out loud
To me a thought is an incomplete bargain
Unsealed until invited
to the world of the living
With a voice, a sound, even a gesture will do
That’s why it’s paramount
To say, ‘look it hurts right here”
To say, ‘it’s been 11 years, yet to me you’re always in the next room, through the door past the kitchen’
Do not let your grief bother the ghosts
A thought unsaid lives with the phantasma
And one shouldn’t haunt more alive than dead

-UV