An Angry Hatching of Closely Spaced Parallel Lines
I adore the ghost. My favourite season is winter
when I can lock the door and it’s me, him, the chilli lights
and our shared addiction to true crime,
but my therapist thinks it’s more the idea than the reality
I’m in love with. She suggests wearing an elastic band
to slap against my wrist whenever I think of him
and let go of self-destructive behaviours, but my skin
becomes an angry hatching of closely spaced
parallel lines and the ghost is inconsolable
making curtains billow and smashing cups etc.,
bemoaning the fact that if I don’t believe in him
none of this will work. The therapist reminds me
of my list of techniques to resist until the desire passes
so I try phoning mother but the ghost’s the jealous type
and hacks the static, flounces about criticising
how both mother and therapist label him as ‘ghost’
when he prefers to think of himself as being
on a spectrum: phantasm, spook, wraith.
This morning when he complained of feeling invisible
we played the lightbulb game again, then kneeling
at the shrine I made with my flickering inner light
I humoured him by asking for the one about
all the different ways there are to die. My therapist says
I need to leave the ghost and enter the courtrooms
and co-ops of the living, but how could I go to bed
without first leaving at the threshold a little bowl
of lemon-water infused with plasmic light to appease him?
Tess Jolly has published two pamphlets: Touchpapers with Eyewear, and Thus the Blue Hour Comes with Indigo Dreams. Her debut collection Breakfast at the Origami Cafe is forthcoming from Blue Diode Press.
