Rewrite of something that’s been sitting in my notes for awhile that I wanna clear from my system. I have something happy that I think I’ll post tomorrow that I’ve been writing all week but first, this.
I was willing something into the universe. A certain something. A glance at a painting. A finger reaching out and smoothing down a hair that’s sticking up.
Instead, a ghost runs through the center of my stomach, pinching a corner of my ascending colon. It turns over inside me and says, “your eyes are the color of rootbeer. Your eyes are the color rootbeer.”
The ghost eats a mango with Tajín on it on a sidewalk in Pilsen. The ghost wears all black in the summer and never sweats. Why would he?
Residual energy is lingering on the corner of Western and 31st. Something is saying my name in a sweet tone. Well, I can’t make it out. It might be saying, “come with me to smoke a cigarette” or “I feel fucked up today” before it dials 911.
The ghost has never made the bed once in it’s never-ending life. The ghost wishes constantly that it’s heart would stop. I contemplate on how to break the news to a ghost that it doesn’t have a heart…not really.
The ghost says “let me record you” and sets up an iPhone on my white antique dresser. I ask myself if ghosts know how to use technology and then remember the movie Poltergeist. There’s now a video of me somewhere in the ether - in some sort of cloud - staring blankly at an iPhone with sunken purple eyes. I roll around on the bed alone because ghosts do not appear on camera.
Ectoplasm comes out of my own mouth as I cough in front of the German embassy in Paris. I have bronchitis I caught from being so jetlagged. The ghost stares on. The ghost is scared of illness. The ghost does not want to be like his friend who ends up dying in the coming years. How do you tell a ghost that they are already dead?
The ghost will never be a statue. Never carved into fame. Never taking up gallery walls being stared at by someone like me, hoping to will something into existence. The ghost just sits on a stoop at 31st and Western, smoking a cigarette and drinking an energy drink, hoping that someday maybe he will die a valiant death.
Hope you share that happy piece, if/when you're ready
You are so beautiful when annoyed. Intimidating as well though.