Between Bruises & Blooms

When fantasy
cannot hold me,

I look for ghosts.

Old houses.

Old murders.

Letters written
by hands
that became dust
before I was born.

Irina Shapiro
has taught me
there is always
another secret
beneath the floorboards.

Another life
waiting inside
an old photograph.

Another dead person
with unfinished business.

And weirdly,

the dead
are easier company
than my thoughts.

A mystery
can be solved.

A haunting
usually has a beginning.

There is a reason
the ghost
keeps walking
the same hallway.

There is a name
buried somewhere
in the records.

A truth
waiting patiently
to be uncovered.

My own mind
is not nearly
so polite.

There is no final chapter
where anxiety explains
why it chose me.

No dusty letter
revealing
where depression began.

No historian
can tell me
why my body
forgot how to sleep.

So I disappear
into someone else's past.

Into mysteries
with answers.

Into Echoes
from the Past.

Into murders
that eventually
give up their secrets.

I keep reading
until my room
turns gray
with morning.

Because fictional ghosts
have never frightened me

half as much

as being alone
with my own head.