JD Scott

Ghost Poem

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2023: VOL. 38.

There is a ghost in my apartment. I don’t mean to suggest that I am haunted in every sense of the word. Only that he is here. Too much of a coward to use the Ouija board, I let him knock papers on to the floor; pencils; pens. There is a ghost in my apartment, and he is not a stranger. If you thought he was, well, I’m sorry, he’s not. We lived together. We slept in the same bed. Sometimes when I have a nightmare (which I have a non-insignificant amount of) I imagine him floating across the ceiling, chasing my worst qualities away. Was that too abstract? “Worst qualities?” I’ll leave your imagination to fill in the gaps. It’s mostly frustrating, living with someone you can no longer see or touch. You have dreams about massaging scented oils into their hair, but when the oils reach their skin, they become poisoned, and they die all over again, and this time it’s your fault. I said “you” when I meant “I.” It was my dream, not yours. You also nod when they push a bookmark off the coffee table, smiling at the invisible portal you are not permitted to step into. Look, I did it again. Let’s try a different point of view: after he left, my mother called me four times each day. I stopped eating. The internet said people stop eating when they’re grieving because they think they don’t deserve to eat. I knew I was punishing myself for something, and it made me angrier that I was rendered down to listicle and statistic. My mother called me for four days. My mother called me sixteen times because she was worried I wanted to die because someone I loved had died, and I didn’t—not really. What’s more frustrating than living with a ghost in your apartment is knowing you have an insufferable will to live; that you’re sorry, but you must keep on. I sit in the kitchen, watching my skin become pale and translucent. I eat a grape. I watch the blood begin to move through my corridors, taking on a new shape