I think I hear ghosts
And then I realize
It’s just this or that
Nonliving, animate objects
Clanking about
Or Screeching
Like convicts
In solitary confinement
Scarecorws
Unrealizing the fear
They give me
In the night
The heater, the floors
The wind
I’m easily spooked
And even more easily
Nauseated.
I thought it all started
After that attempt I made
To not exist
In the world I know.
But now I think it began before.
Dry heaving into trashcans,
Spitting out my empty attempts
To release the bad unfeelings
Manifestations of emptiness
There wasn’t anything there
To purge
Just an invisible sadness
Broken glass
Phantom Vomit
Ghosts of people
Out there in the world
Moving about,
Living their lives.
I’m scared of everything.
I hide behind the sofa
In my dead grandmother’s house
Sold long ago
To Strangers
I hide there in hopes that
I’ll never have to hear of pain
Or see road kill
Or learn about more atrocities.
I guard myself from such things
Always knowing,
With so much nausea,
That security is a silly word
Manufactured improperly
At a bullet proofing factory
That shut down centuries back
Due to various issues
And I find myself forgetting to breath
In the most physically trying of my experiences
Like climbing to the third floor of my apartment building
Once a dormitory for nuns
Who worked as nurses in a hospital that burnt down
The same year as the Asylum did
Where Zelda Fitzgerald was kept
From the world
I hold my breath every time I ascend
The stairway to my little habitat
And as I enter,
I take in giant gasps of air
Like a drowning person resurrected
Winded with thoughts of death and dying
I shouldn’t think about the simplicity of death,
Or the torture of it all
The toil of living
The toil of dying
Every time I walk up those stairs
I should probably just try to remember to breath,
I unintentionally mock the ghosts
When I take those first giant breaths
Upon entering my home.
Upon entering my home.