Ghost Friends
Childhood taught me the word ‘forever’, in the oath of a pinky promise
sealed with a bit of spit.
(We didn’t know the rules back then.)
Tea parties with our own ghosts, tipsy from a juice box and biscuit,
dusty and a bit too sincere, we would be
best friends forever
(But only at midnight would you say it.)
We were always a bit at odds, I was insecure, you were never sure.
I cut my hair short after you did, copy cat was the word you called me.
Two Leos and their manes, what was I thinking?
(I grew mine long until I was nineteen.)
Childhood taught me the word ‘forever’, beautiful and doomed,
we spoke in hyperbole to bridge the gap in between.
After seven years across the sea, ghost friends are as close as they’ll ever be.
(I can help you now, I know a thing or two about anxiety.)
Jane
I was a girl, fifteen in August.
I read Jane Eyre as if it were a diary entry, cliché I know, but I was only fourteen.
You were a boy. You smoked cigarettes.
You couldn’t run a mile without needing rest.
What you said about us girls, I thought it was idle gossip.
But then again, red flags only exist to mock.
I was just a girl, you were just a boy, how could I tell them
what you did to me? What boys do when they are angry?
I would not learn the word Incel until five years later, but a label would not have saved me.
Red pills and red flags do not stop the blood from staining the bathroom floor.
On the bus ride home I read Jane Eyre as if she was whispering to me.
Cliché I know, but I was only fourteen.
“Do you know where the wicked go after death?”
"They go to hell,”
"What must you do to avoid it?”
"I must keep in good health and not die.”
I remember the promise I made to not kill myself.
Red pills, red flags, and red fire do not stop the heart from pumping.
Red comes at night, but at least my wounds have stopped bleeding.
I remember my promise as I read Brontë again, the burning shame of being not quite fifteen.
I don’t remember as much of the pain these days, but to write is to heal,
and to love is to be like Jane.
Fresh water in a stale house
A toast of water to the old place.
The hallways bare, the childhood bedroom a dollhouse of dust.
Familiar scent of mothballs and soap, I smelt a ghost in my own mausoleum.
Haunting yet healing, she had no goddamn respect for the past
(and it was better that way.)
Newness melts the soupy ice cubes,
I never thought I would drink lukewarm water.
Porcelain doll shards on the floor in the old place, we were bitter.
The room of old loss, but goddamn, a lot of charm,
we were old sports of a kind, a spectre critic and a papered poet.
In this new place, we are better.
A toast of water to the better place, of boundaries and ‘yes please’,
a cup of bland sobriety, to the place of good friends,
platonic bookends to the novels we wrote when we knew less.
