Ghosts & Pauses

When will ghosts stop breathing?
They do not sit in hospital beds or
behind cupboard doors,
or even on the ceilings of churches.

They swallow the telephone cables
so that the line hums in an unknown language
of ampersands and colons and speech marks;
(they never do sleep).

They are the slight glare or smudge
on your bathroom mirror:
the one with the medicine cabinet
behind it, or next door’s bedroom.

They lie in your womb and suckle
the blood cells and cancer cells,
and the hundreds of unformed fetus,
waiting to give them their name.

If you place your hand just under your ribcage
you can feel them sighing and
spitting, and sucking, slowly slowly;
(they never are satisfied).

That nauseating moment between sleep
and waking: that’s ghosts too.
They slip their hands down into your mouth
and tickle your veins until they are raw above your skin.

I have tried to talk to them but it is exhausting.
I have tried to talk to myself, but no one is listening.

October 2013

What inspired me: A preoccupation with too many thoughts. I don’t know which one to listen to. I don’t know what I hear anymore.