Being a better kind of ghost
Due to the high levels of domestic accident these days,
There’s a chance that I might be a newly formed Ghost,
It doesn’t feel the way you think, though
I am solid, breathable, clumsy like you
I can still exhale, be indelicate,
railing and flailing and moving things round
was never really my scene
I return each night though,
Undress in the dark, set the alarm, lay on the bed,
Try and steal the covers like always
Once I whispered, asked you to come with me
It’s too late you said, sleep,
Ask me in the morning
I listen properly now, without interrupting
But it seems there’s nothing you want to say
In the evenings, we just chill on the sofa
with the wine we once shared,
And never give away the end of the film,
While you doze, I guzzle the popcorn crumbs
I still put the bins out on Wednesday night
Because you always forget
Clink down the moonlit path
Like a good husband
Being dead is no excuse for not recycling
I wonder how long we go on like this,
In a spectral domestic bliss, I hope its forever,
Or at least till you are ready,
To come away with me
The promise of rain
Promise me the sun will not shine every morning,
But, in the absence of light, you will instead
Explain your half- remembered dream,
This time I will listen, and try to understand
We will each acknowledge our side of
The corruption of bed linen,
And, for the sake of argument
Smooth out the frowning wrinkles
With swallowed pride
Promise me, if we must one day revisit
These moments of misunderstanding,
We can go together, bare foot
Not wallowing but
squelching in the mire
Promise me the soft fingertips of rain,
Gently resting in palms,
Ready for forgiveness,
A slow melting of last nights’ frost
Those silent signs of a thaw
Opening night
The week of the show,
You had started wearing the umbilical cord
like a fashionable scarf, tighter
And try with all your tiny might,
There was no way to undo it
Ready, in your pink birthday suit,
This had become an engagement party, of sorts
Head down, ready to depart into a fluid world
A wrinkle, frowned in hospital towels, a new costume,
Rushed down blurry corridors into a waiting theatre
To play blindly, in the performance of your life
It snowed that morning even though it was late Easter,
in the darkness we observed the melt, numbed and
dressed for the occasion
in blue scrubs waiting, watching, an incubation period
This was no dress rehearsal
Opening on stage, ten weeks earlier than planned,
You became a living puppet, tangled wires twisted,
pumped up your lungs flat as pancakes,
steroid breath, finding your voice,
you were the star of this show,
Somehow, you made it through the opening night,
A brave performance,
Centre stage in the hospital floodlights