Haunted

Ghosts are burning the edge of my
vision. i can feel the way they crowd and
jumble, the way their fingers are pulling
sticky fingers against my sanity and
dragging me further and further into the
rabbit hole of my insecurity. i can see
them in the shadows at the base of my eyelids and feel their voices in the
spaces between my vertebrae. they call
me when i'm awake and they scream
when i'm asleep and i claw at my face
and i pull at my skin, but they burrow
deeper and deeper still. they quiet and stagnate, yet i can feel
them in the dust that my feet unsettle
as i walk forward. their faces are
persistent and their mouths gaping open
with the scent of decay bound like a
cord around their flapping tongues. they are silent and knowing, touching my
inner demons with a violating hand. they
nod, they smile; they are smug. i hate
them for this. they see the way my
heart quivers in my chest and they
stroke the trembling bones that it clacks against. they crack the silence and
whisper, tell me of sweaty nights and
whispered words of passion. they tell
me of possessive fingers and pleading
hips, and murmured words of forever in
the arch where throat kisses sloping shoulder. they tell me of how stars
burned for them like midnight oil, how
passion arched over arched spines and
the way they made pulses thicken and
slow. how desires that deep may sail
where they please, but always return to where they anchored first. they tell me that nothing lasts forever
except yesterday. and this is when i run, and scramble, and
fall to scraped-up knees and yet do not
stop. this is when i dive into a vehicle
entrenched in dust and spin rubber
against asphalt. the ghosts, they pound
against my windows and they scream in time with the wind. my pulse hammers
and the wheel leaps in my hand. my
palms are slick with fear, my back
drenched with doubt. i break my
mirrors, i blow my speakers, i run from
them, but i am naught but a moth in a thunderstorm. passing headlights look like
fallen stars. i am entranced by their light.
death looks like constellations hovering
above the two-lane highway. they are in
my lane, i am in theirs. ghosts are
whipping around my fenders and seeping under my hood. they are
screaming, but it's my throat that is raw. [falling stars taste like metal on my
tongue; passing galaxies feel like
shattered shrapnel in my chest. i am
laying on the asphalt next to my imaginary burning
car and the chipped-paint meteorite.
they are touching my cheek, my hand, the hole gaping by my sternum, they
are brushing matted dreads from my face. i
can see their mouths moving, i can see
their eyes rolling back into their heads, i
can see their bones jutting through
their flesh. i see the whites of their eyes and the past replayed in static. i see
projections that i cannot outrun in the
chapped skin of their lips. i was
screaming; now i can't stop hearing her screaming.