Diagnostics for Human Ghosts

 

List what you've misplaced:

Socks, dreams, two weeks' time.

 

In the mirror, how many holes

Where teeth used to hide?

 

Weigh your harvest: lungs,

Liver's slice, fingers of strife.

 

Gauge the path from thought

To sight—How far the light?

 

Count the silences when words

Failed you or you failed them.

 

How translucent are you?

Can moonbeams pen your memoirs?

 

Choose a rune, rename yourself.

Listen—Is that singing your elegy?

 

Classify your demise.

Chart the empire of your dust.

 

On the scale of ghost to shadow,

Mark your worth in others' thoughts.

 

Do you perch on whispers,

invisible yet omnipresent?

 

Inspect. Are you whole

Or something less than sum?