The Ghost Who Hasn't Died Yet

 I came to the house

A few days before

I died

That’s how it works

Most people--

With most people

The soul leaves the body

A few days

Before the body

Is no longer...accessible to it

Transition periods

Are important

Even when you’re talking

About life and death

So…

You get a few days

To get your bearings in order

And find the place

Where you’re going

To spend the rest of eternity

Provided you’re not interested

In being a roaming ghost

Which, some are,

But your sense of direction

As a tetherless spirit

Is something akin

To being blind and free of limbs

So most ghosts prefer

To just find a place

And stick to it

That’s what I did anyway

Found a house

Near where my old house was

Nice attic

Dark, musty

But a good amount of moonlight

Coming in from one of those

Porthole windows

You see attics having

In the movies

You’re not allowed

To stay and haunt your own house

Unless you have some unfinished business there

But even then

You need to state your case

Before the Body of Possession

And despite the anecdotal evidence

I can assure you

They’re not likely to let you haunt

Unless you’ve really been wronged

I died of a heart attack

With no grievances whatsoever

And that meant

I needed to move to another location

Never a good idea

To spend your afterlife

Where you spent your life

Just blurs the line

Between the living and the dead

And it benefits us all

To have that line

Be nice and clear

I always wanted

To live in an attic anyway

I used to spend all my time as a kid

In the one we had at my childhood house

And my mother would get mad

And say ‘You have a perfectly nice bedroom’

And I did

But I liked being

Away from everyone

And everything

Surrounded by boxes

Full of old clothes

And the dressmaker’s dummy

My mother got

At the flea market

There’s no dressmaker’s dummy

In this attic

But there are boxes

Lots of them

And one of them…

One of them

Has a shirt in it

With blood all over it

Not sure where the blood came from

Could be something innocent

As a ghost, you don’t…

You don’t know anymore

Than what the living know

But…

I have a feeling

When I was a kid

I found a knife

Wrapped up in an old handkerchief

And the knife was rusty

But it was a particular kind of rust

And when I brought it to my mother

She told me to put it back where I found it

And never ask about it again

This time I have no one to ask

But I look at the shirt

And I put what used to be my hand through it

And when what used to be my hand

Comes back

It’s bright red in the moonlight

And I feel myself split apart

And come back together

But I don’t move

And I don’t focus on it too much

Because I’m still

A day away from dying

At that point

And I don’t want

To mess

That up