Now That You're a Ghost

you've been drawing houses on your mattress

and your sheets with the hope it won't be long until it's all the metaphor you need.

at home above your parents' dresser was a portrait of the sea.

and all the months you second-guessed their love

and looked for it in me.

lying in the road with everyone you know wrapped around your wrists,

filling in the holes.

the drugs are homeless ghosts looking for someone to haunt,

to be their host.

puppets staged at dawn.

you say, "all i want is some concern or someone to care for me."

you raise your cup.

say, "here's to all the months you've never noticed anything."

a blindfold, 100 knotted ropes.

your hands are forming fists,

but there's nothing that they hold onto.

you're filling up bottles with dirty roof-touched rain

and lining them against the porch's edge

and whispering as you'd say,

"if winter comes before i find someone to cover up this stain,

i'll lie down and cover it myself but never get up again."

now that you're a ghost,

you leave in little notes taped to the bricks these sad and somber poems.

with ribbons up, the palest yellow gauze all decorate your dreams

and tie a knot or make a bow across any broken scenes.