Little ghost girl, why do you continue on?
You know you’re more phantom than person
nowadays, your bones have unraveled like
frayed yarn. You drag yourself from place to place,
like a wounded dog with a broken leg, whimpering
and baying but then screaming I’m fine when someone
gets too close. Little ghost girl, you’re getting
even paler, even more transparent. Your pain only
grows wilder and wider but it makes it even easier
to see right through you. The people, they look away
when they catch sight of your sallow skin, your pale face,
your dead misery is too cold to be around. It’s easier
to tell ghost stories around fires in the dead of night
than to look one in the face, crumbling and faltering
right before their eyes. Poor ghost girl, you never sleep.
You stay awake to howl at the big dead moon until it
swallows you whole, then rise in the morning to
deep purple mountains making their homes
under your eyes. You tell yourself, I’m at least half-dead,
anyway, and turn sour at the sight of food. Your belly,
it eats itself, and you think of the day it’ll open its frail jaws
and chew away at the rest of you. Ghost girl, I see you.
I love you, ghost girl. I miss the red of your cheeks when
you’d laugh, your church bell of a voice, the songs always
bursting from your ocean tide eyes, the solidity of your
flesh that now flees from my memory. Ghost girl, there’s so
much waiting for you out there. You cannot see it but there’s
better for you than your worn corpse existence.
There’s the sweet smell of cake, the orchids nodding
at the sun out the window. There’s rainy nights and golden
days and radiant twilights in between. There’s dogs with
the softest ears just waiting for you to save their lives.
Waiting to save yours. Ghost girl, stop digging your grave.
Grab onto the walls, you’ve got more substance than you think.
Open your mouth, take hold of your mother, and cry until
there’s no storms left in this side of the world. And tell her,
over and over, I’m alive, I’m alive.
I need help.
I want to survive.
Wanda Deglane
Latest posts by Wanda Deglane (see all)
- Ghost Girl by Wanda Deglane - May 4, 2018