TWO GHOSTS

“Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh, but here, too!” It’s upstairs,” she murmured. “And in the garden,” he whispered. “Quietly,” they said, “Or we shall wake them.”

— Virginia Woolf

You are
the blue moon over the desert,
the dark glove in the snowstorm,
waving goodbye.
This isn’t a love story.
This is how we fail
each other.
This is how
we don’t stay friends.
Commit, ensnare, possess—
words we run from.
Broken, devour, caress—
words you can keep.
What I want—
to lay out my bones
next to yours,
linger along tiled hallways,
rough with dust.
watch in silence
as the stars dance,
a slow fade.
But you have nothing
to give,
your face is turning away
into the light.

Jessica Drake-Thomas is a poet and freelance writer. She is a graduate of Emerson College's MFA in Creative Writing. She is the author of Possession (dancing girl press).Her work has been featured in Ploughshares, Eye To The Telescope, NewMyths (forthcoming) and Star*Line (also forthcoming).