Habits of Ghosts

Things are how they are. People are as they act.

They’ve shown you they’d kill you and leave you by the roadside only feeling some pity when the warmth of their living room fire goes out momentarily for themselves and the company they keep.

Then do they imagine how it must’ve felt for the sun to set on you.

And to selfishly assuage themselves of guilt or some spiritual karmic repercussion, they write you or call on you or come look for you to sit and reminisce on how times were good before they left you for dead and your flesh for kill. How the laughs were weighty before your throat dried up and they walked away with water.

Hungry for affection you accept a tepid offering telling yourself it is just as warm as you need it although it gripes your stomach each time they call on you because you slowly come to realize they are poisoning you over and over again in small subtle ways; abusing your kindness, your forgiveness, your stick-it-out-ness.

They hate you, you tell yourself whenever the calls go click. You mustn’t think for a second that because they say things contrary to that fact that you should believe them. No, they hate you.

In the same way a man who hates a woman holds her neck around his hands until she bruises as if his hands and her neck are parts made for showcasing love.

Why then can’t you hate them too? Why do you pick up the phone, answer the door, walk down the high street to meet them in some cafe away from their fire friends who’d see you and think you a ghost because you’re the one that’s supposed to be dead.

A ghost that they tell themselves they are “good with now” so that sleep comes as easy as it did before they killed you.

And maybe you are a ghost brought back to life supposed to do something different than hang around the people that killed you in the first place.

But you are a stubborn ghost. Who lingers in before and entertains indecisive murderers who have no idea what they want from you.