This house is haunted, a ghostly girl
with straw braids and felt eyes glides silent thought it at night
and although we live here, we are ghosts too
made from the dust that hands from cobwebs, from curtains,
from eyelashes we painted shiny black
like patent leather shoes, reflecting her eyes
clicking with nervousness on tiled floors
like the noise of rattling chains.

She remembers when I would reach into my mother’s boxes
And pull out things that were hidden from me
I would paint my face with lipstick
Like a clown, like a dead child, like her
I’d think of life in flashes,
In waves that pulled in and out, light and dark,
I saw things through the sun,
The lilacs that I hid beneath in summer was a garden house
The seasons rarely changed and I couldn’t feel the tides
Or see the other side.

China dolls watched the ghost girl
They, and the bright happy walls,
Are the only ones who know
They see my betrayal,
The straw-haired ghost girl hides within me,
Buries her face in my breasts.
Sometimes she thinks I am her mother,
with the same soft breasts she longed to touch.
She is trapped in time, in channels,
Waving from the shore until her hands a ripped.
I bleed and moan and have legs that prickle.
I see myself through the eyes of those around me.
I am all that’s left, me and the ghosts I leave behind.