Ghosts can choose to walk out of one’s closet at the most inconvenient times.
You can chase it back inside and lock the door, or you might
Snap at it with a murderous look in your eye,
“I thought I told you to fucking leave”
But today, when his ghost walked out of my closet, I did not
Push or yell. Instead, I slid over
And invited it to lie next to me.
I don’t know why I did that, and it was awkward at first;
Then I got angry and found the thin line between love and hate,
Finally grasping the concept of “hate-fucking,” which was
- I might add -
Wholly unwelcome
But then, after an emotionally-tumultuous few moments, I found myself
Crying
The kind of crying that makes you want to shrink into yourself
The kind that says, “the only thing more vulnerable than this
Is to literally peel back my skin
So that you might see inside the cavity of my
Chest, and part of me hates you
For witnessing me
Like this.”
But I didn’t say that. Instead,
I found myself saying something that I am not even sure is true:
“I loved you, you know.”
The ghost did not answer, but showed me a picture of him as
A small child. I understood then
That decay can only eat the flesh of those
Once living, once glimmering in their youthfulness -
Innocent, small, and dazzling
This understanding did not make the decrepit appearance of the ghost
Any less unsettling; however,
as I laid there with just futile words and
incomplete questions,
I realized…
The ghost had only the same.
Just as my words cannot make tangible my inner world
- Ten years-worth of settling dust, the feeling
Of being the earth onto which your life is
Collapsing; the feeling of being trapped
Under burnt skin -
Neither can he.
Neither can his ghost.
We are only left with our own vague truths and the knowledge
That even those are not the half of it.
So I said no more – no justifications, no explanations, no qualifiers or addendums.
No effort to make the ghost understand, nor effort to validate myself.
Just, “I loved you,
You know?”
And I cried those awful tears – tears I am glad no one but a ghost was around to see
And when my body had said its piece,
I walked the ghost to the door -
Not the closet door.
The front door.
And I watched it leave.
I feel strangely now:
The ghost may come back to visit, I know,
But it no longer lives
In the closet of my chest
And I know,
As much as I hated it,
I had needed it to stay
It had wanted to linger
Only because we both
Had yet to realize, and
Both needed to understand
That there was nothing left to say
Nothing more to \"hash out\"
Other than goodbye