The ghosts under the front porch
are waiting for me to join them.
This home wasn’t built for the living
but I’m still here, aren’t I?
why shouldn’t I stay forever?
& I mean,
I’ve looked under the floorboards for a way out
but leaving isn’t always so easy.
This place clings to me
no matter how hard I try to shake it off.
An image in reverse every time I close my eyes:
last week I cried for four hours
before finally falling asleep.
But you think it’s odd that I have bad dreams.
I tell you,
I think when I’m dead
I want to be buried under a redwood tree
and I want its roots to curl around my sleeping body
as it falls apart.
You ask, wouldn’t that be an awful weight?
No, I say, it would be a gift to be consumed.
No, it’s not any heavier than what
I already carry with me.
But I’m still breathing.
Maybe one day I’ll figure out how to uproot myself
from this corpse of a structure.
& who knows where we’ll be
three years, three decades, three lifetimes from now?