ghost talk

You say, I’m not a ghost, but my blind spots beg to differ

I think I see you coming, you slip out through cracks and fissures

There is no certain time of day that you kiss a certain way

for moments, the way your eyes they catch I think that you may stay

But that’s a different conversation to have with a different ghost

I should tally all the times I’ve seen you’ve ask to hold me close

We keep a log of moments, they pile through the years,

that leads this ship to sail across the world to Tangier

I’ve been working on the language, tightening the bolts,

stretching out the kinks so the heartless will revolt

But no matter where I go and how far I seem to reach,

I find your ghost beside me, through tight lips you will beseech-

That I learn to love you less and let you go some more,

it can’t be quite so healthy to keep a ghost behind closed doors

That you really aren’t a ghost, that you do this just to me,

and that for all the other women, there is more for them to see

I draw words inside the windows on the glass that doesn’t break,

and wait around for no one besides for bones and rattled names

And in every other way I am never quite so weak,

I can’t draw the meaning from the few words you choose to speak

You say, look I am a real boy, and I wonder what you mean,

and wonder what it is you see in what you do to me

And when you’re finally gone I ask the walls if you were here,

but no one speaks about you and the way you disappear.

 

all photographs taken by Tessa Barton, Tessa Barton Photography