THE  27Th  EDITIOn

I could’ve sworn I saw a ghost down by my old high school.

Out in the mud and the patchy grass, a wick of moonlight swaying in the saltwater breeze.

Wading knee-deep in the grazing midnight mob,

standing pale in the goose shit.

There used to be cats to kill the rats

and dogs to chase the birds away,

but now this place belongs to them.

 

I saw a ghost there in the cold of a lonely night, on the other side of the old chain fence.

I was just walking past and I caught a glimpse,

and for a moment I pitied him.

To remain—

to remain when the paint flakes away, when the mortar turns to dust,

to remain when the water rises and the ocean claims our homes.

To live a day unending must be a curse.

When I turned to leave, I understood. 

 

I wouldn’t be one to haunt the football field. Not like him.

But the day will come when my memories will be torn down

and I’ll wish I was buried beneath them.

Gathering dust in the musty dark behind the stage, carved into the wall with my name,

or left behind in my desk facing the windows in room two-seventeen, waiting for the bell.

Forgotten in that damp, weedy corner of the garden, kissing thin air with both eyes open.

 

When I turned to leave, I thought

maybe one of them was his, the shattered cars

laid to rest in the lot next to the school, over the rusted wire.

One of them with a tire through its windshield and both doors somewhere else.

Crippled, engine and stereo long gone.

 

Maybe some nights he rides in that ghost of a car,

round and around the dirt track and the naked bleachers,

and somebody’s soul in a homecoming dress

sits with her legs through the moonroof and smiles and waves.

 

I never saw a ghost smile before,

but then she was there, grinning and glowing on the water like dark glass.

Shining like the stars had all burnt out long ago,

and the moon turned to dust in a dark sky,

and she was there to try to make up for it.

 

I’ve never seen a ghost smile before, not like him.

A red-cheek, shut-eye, twenty-four-tooth crack in the face

that seemed to say you’re all I need right now.

The kind of happy you can only remember.

Smiles like the dances you do all alone.

Like nobody’s looking and the clocks are all broken,

or like those nights you just get lost in,

and the passage of time is a choice

that every aching fiber of your soul is trying to refuse.

The nights that live forever,

when you’d rather die than see the sun come up.