ghosts

it was like visiting ghosts that reminded you of how things could have been. the junkies on worn couches, the decided carelessness, eyes fatigued from looking but not seeing. the cigarette smoke clinging to the wallpaper, and doesn’t the way it curls remind you of something? don’t you relate to the wallpaper then? the stifling heat, too, how it thwarted us! we were dead fish laying on top of sheets, allowing the fury of the sun to convince us that nothing could change. i remember the years i spent loving the terror. afterwards, i couldn’t brush up against anyone’s world without bleeding. no one would believe me unless they knew already, but it’s much easier than you think— loving the terror.