Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night
and see ghosts. I see a window, and a desk, and
a door.
I’m still there.
I feel sorry for myself. There’s a gaunt man in
the mirror. I’m not sure
if he’s me.
They’re talking about digging
shallow graves so that if you
die young you could rise
from the ashes.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night
and there’s silence slinking in the creaks of my bed
and I ask her where we are right now
and she tells me we are nowhere right now
and I remember from the night before
how the stairs went up to oblivion
and how scintillating Manhattan was.
And how I feel sorry for myself
because I’m nowhere right now.
And how I feel sorry for myself for
feeling sorry for myself for feeling sorry for
myself for feeling sorry for myself
for feeling sorry.
The one thing I recall from there
are the nights. Carrot-clouded nights
and suave white lights, downhill streets
and swinging on stars and
eating red moon citrus and
fire crickets rising in smoke puffs above my roof
and there’s a soft, surreptitious
whisper from the darkness of trees,
like a ghost, or like the man
that I found in my mirror.
