You don’t really “talk” to ghosts, anyway. It’s my experience, which is very, very limited, that it’s all unspoken. Nothing audible passes, though you do hear words, not through ears, more like in the chest, that juncture in the upper thorax, slightly above where the heart lies.
You could say I wasted time today; read the comics, a couple of useless articles in the paper, took the long way round to work, slowed down to watch kids of all ages play sports in the park.
Watching a football game that I don’t really care about. Toggling the news channel. The world’s a mess, but keep hope alive. I can hear the water turned on and off in the apartment next door. A dog barks across the way. The city is waiting for the storm to drop. My stomach gurgles. I feel content.
I’ve always had pride (that could be part of the problem here) about how healthy I eat and regularly exercise. I have counted on that track record to ward off common viruses and germ-passed illnesses that circulate on a regular basis, but a fissure has opened up in that theory.
Write a brave poem, my mind says to my shrinking self, who just wants to take a nap. Okay, okay, what is brave and what is not? Let’s discuss.
On the shuttle from Sea-Tac to Bellingham zipping up the I5 north, on the way to see my cousins, I keep saying (in my head of course) I love you, I love you, not sure who, or what, I’m speaking to—could be the Space Needle coming up on the right, powder blue sky, the just turning aspens lining the freeway.
We live in an apartment with two balconies, where a squirrel we’ve named Eddie and another named Eddie Jr, frequent our potted plants to bury their cache for the winter months. They inevitably make a mess with the dirt they scatter all over, which my husband thinks is cute and I don’t.
I’m going to start writing my truth, though I hardly know it, can barely look it in the eye, though I’m terrified of what it will reveal.
Hari B Poet 