There are ghosts everywhere
Boys on swings
Girls on trampolines
Men sitting outside the local cocktail bar
A woman cycling a bike
Looking like
Someone I used to know
A butterfly in the belly
You’re primed to talk
Get ready to walk over to her
And ask her how the days are
And the nights
And laugh about how life has changed
Forcefully rearranged
By tiny cries, and eyes, and limbs
Demands, pushes, kicks, scratches, pinches, shoves
Screams, pleas, cuddles, laughs, loves
But you stop, in your head
You walk past, you don’t look
It can’t be her
Because she left
Like all the others
Who did and will
Take the moving pill
Clear the herbs from the windowsill
No matter how much you think
You have a life here
A family next door
Ears to listen
Cups to drink from
Your delusions of a village in a city
Dinners to cook when it all dies down
People who know you and understand
Your chaotic, happy, sad, frustrating
Elating, mind-blowing, mundane days
You were told, but still you built
Your castle of sand, in the mud
And cry when it collapses in the flood
The ghosts are everywhere
And, like everyone and everything
They, too, will go