You tried explaining to your ghost
that it had come too soon, as evidenced
by the breaths you used to speak to it.
Even when you showed it how you
could press your hand into it and have it
pass right through, it did not believe.
Even after you took it to work and
stripped it of its ethereal frame to show
that it was nothing, it remained intact.
You explained to it how you sometimes forgot
to squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom or
kiss your wife goodbye in the morning
or to wash the knives after splitting apples
or to linger and stare at the window whenever
déjà vu etched its way across your being.
In turn it told you that after your life,
there is a large field where the sun forever rises
and the word “once” is carried in echoes forever.
You took your ghost home and folded it like clothes,
broke it down, organized it into boxes and bins,
knowing that one day, it would replace you.
Barry Napier has had more than 40 poems and short stories published in print and online. He is the author of The Bleeding Room, 13 Broken Nightlights, and The Masks of Our Fathers. His poetry collection, A Mouth for Picket Fences, is available from Needfire Poetry. He has served as guest poetry editor at Inkspill Magazine and is currently editing the poetry collection I Know What I Saw: poems of the unexplained. Learn more about him at www.barrynapierwriting.wordpress.com.
