My life, it's like a Night Garden
The flowers all folded up
Grown cold and deathly looking in the pale moonlight.

Me! I've just been dreaming... dreaming of the sun
And all the colours like in a painting
How they'd run

How they'd light me up inside, from within
And how I'd smile, just like I smiled back then.

I've just been thinking, thinking of the fun...all the old fun
And dreaming... dreaming of the sun.

(I've just been sitting here in my Night Garden just sitting here waiting... waiting for the ghosts to come).

I had a ghost, too polite to scare,
haunting took the form of kind notes,
a fridge periodically restocked,
socks paired and put in drawers

Eschewing rattled chains and wails
it chose to put the radio on,
only ever easy listening,
Sunday mourning

No ectoplasm,
no unexplained temperature drops
no arcanely spelled clues
to the tragedy of a restless soul

In time, it exorcised itself
and my communion was lost,
with a tidied kitchen,
all brass fittings shone

And I was left with everyday fear

Monk Taio Kaneta

In everyday life
we sacrifice our need to feel
without even knowing it

I see them in reflections - the orange juice glass at breakfast or my iPhone where they can pop, like notifications - I keep my phone face down.

They usually want to tell you something - how it was for them - their history. I discount these emotional messages - they come with the jester's assumption that I care - that I need the performance and will get involved.

“What are you doing?” My mom asks, as I’m taking all the shiny, mirror-like ornaments off the Christmas tree.
“The glare gives me a headache” I say, without stopping.
“Your Grandma does that too”, she says, wiping her hands on a Santa-themed dish-towel.
“Really?” I say, but I know that and I know why.

I started having nightmares, when I was in first grade. My mom thought I had an overactive imagination but when she described it to my grandma, she soon showed up for a visit.

Over the next few weeks my Grandma told me about our “gift”. About how we were both born on the same day, under a waning third moon, in Autumn. That we're both “Yins,” doxies (sweethearts) of the dead and that we could, at times, see and hear people who were between stops on their way to their after-lives.

That’s why the dead parachute into my unused moments from reflective surfaces. They can be anxious or in despair - when their death is cruel or sudden but I'm an adolescent - I'm in school - what can I do??

The presence of water discourages them - which is perfect - can you imagine seeing spirits in the reflections of your bath? EEUUUWWW!  You’ll hardly ever see me without a water bottle or polarized sunglasses - which seem to break-up the images. I'll not be smothered in other people's afterlives.

“Haunted Houses” (1858)
All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the doorway, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table, than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapors dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star,
An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,–

So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

In the vastness
of the drafty
slat wooden
house,

along the tidal
lettered
streets
of Gearhart;

Snapping images
with waning
filtered light
inside the darkness,

waiting for ghosts
to drift out of
the
shadows,

wondering if my
family's past
have to wait in line
behind
the house spirits
to announce themselves;

Asking us why
we almost
always keep a light
on

In time,
will I leave
a small energy
stamp
after I cross,
ghosting
it out
inside
degrading buildings
after waiting in line

questioning
why
the living
worry so much
and live
so little