18. AMERICA’S MOST HAUNTED

The house grows cold like pink-ice on an Eskimo’s nose.
Nightmemories cover me like clouds of balaclava.

My eyes stare out, short-sighted though nebulous gulfs,
because the light was on at odd hours. I don’t breathe

unless your breath softsteps & curls around the plateaus
of my ribcage. I’m a ghost with blood in your ghost’s purse,

clanking the loose change, zippering the airlocks, looking
for a reimbursement of my regretful speech to implode

the banking system of my plunge into the abyss of all these
silent days, where I’ve become a sub-atomic passerby to you;

a doctored hallucination? I’ve given in to our mysterious
bond like children that eventually surrender to Reality.

I’m in a shallow pool, a bottomless attic as you hold
your tongue of many possibilities. I’m a cobweb of

superficial coloring to you—I see through the grey area.
Desperate is the thick flesh of each passing day

where I hold tight the sweaty hands of Hope. I cup the head
of a flower, gazing at it as if there’s nothing else, as if

like a childhood crush, a blush is all that is needed
to color the world. I’m a glint on every plant in your garden;

the greenhouse is a bodyguard of our imaginations; the wettest
petals impersonate our conscious & unconscious minds

which is like an unintact screenplay. If you were to
touch me now, dearest friend, would we be like mere corpses

clawing through the same sepulchre, transfixed to the cold soil
of yesterday’s mummified arteries?