Small Bumps, Big Sheet
When I shiver my body forms
small
bumps
and in each bump lives a ghost.
Bumps
for the dead.
Bumps
for the living.
Bumps
for grandparents, never met.
Bump
for grandparent met (don’t ask).
There is a graveyard full of bones and relatives and dust and stones. I saw the stones on the babies’ graves, and it makes me go cold, cold like the dead.
A
bump
for the time my body was taken away from me and returned with
and bruises and memory loss.
A freezing cold hand on the shoulder, Freezing cold and causing skin to It freezes us
AWAKE
and
ALIVE
.
bump
.
bumps
I AM ALIVE.
On my skin lives death, though.
Jewishness many deaths. Family many deaths (he’s dead, she’s dead). Self death over and over and over and over and over.
I haunt myself constantly. I hold on to relics of a life that doesn’t exist anymore I carry them around like chains. (Link by link)
My uncle’s bag Link The hospital robe Link Record player Link Pictures of the dead Link Link Link Link Link
I take death with me, and you probably do too.
When I think of _________ and I think of no body, and I think of a battered body.
The discarded exoskeleton of an inconceivable thing lives on me. A collapsed, damp body, bruised and naked. I carry her on my back with me, piggyback. shedding
gone wrong.
she stays attached to my skin like a gruesome sheet over my body, eye holes poked out
I trudge along with it.
Link by link.
Another
bump
when the alarm rings
a familiar and reassuring sound. The bell tolls ‘remember-your-dead o’clock.’
My uncle speaks through this alarm. I imagine he is saying thank you. I imagine he is laughing. “We will always remember his laugh, always to some inappropriate joke.” I feel the walls shake when he laughs.
It helps when the alarm rings.
I haven’t heard the alarm in a while, maybe the battery died. Where does the ghost go when it dies? No more rings how many more deaths?
I carry my uncle’s bag with me I attach it to the waist of the body on my back and she carries the load. We put the alarm in the bag, and he comes with too, laughing as we move we walk through walls together.
BEEP. Thank you. BEEP. Thank you.
I trudge along in my sheet, and it comforts me. Does yours comfort you? Does yours disturb you?
I stash the bag full of the mints that were in the room he died in. Murray mints for my uncle Murray.
The sheet is weighted and when I sleep, it pushes me
down.
It bruises my knee. (ghost)
It is a blunt force on my elbow, and I can feel the blood swimming around when I move. (ghost)
LIFE
and
DEATH
existing in one place, like it always does.
Death upon death and we all die a million times each day. We force objects to become our sheets and we force the sheets to become our armour.
Without the sheets we are nothing Without the sheets we do not exist
I write these words and therefore I exist, and at the exact same time I have died another death.
Sometimes the claw of death just scratches you. You don’t stop living, just a part of you does just like it did when _______________________________________________________________________
When I have seen others scratched by death it steals and takes If G-d exists, do they do the same? Steal and take and laugh at us when we cling to pathetic bits of plastic and cloth and wear them over ourselves?
Does
Oh Lord, Our G-d,
laugh at how we live on a pile of bodies?
How we travel through the writhing tide of ghosts?
I keep my sheet on and it protects me from
G-d
.
I’ll keep adding things and it will get heavier and thicker and more ornate and I’ll walk through walls and I will be protected from
G-d
will walk through walls in my sheet and I will be protected from
DEATH
itself and I will place myself like a stone on top of a grave and
and I
DEATH
won’t see me there and I will collect ghosts and they will protect me and I will become one of them before I have become one of them and it will protect me from
DEATH
itself and it will protect me from
G-d
itself.
I don’t believe in ghosts and they live with me and we walk through walls together.
I don’t believe in ghosts and the undead sing me to sleep.
I don’t believe in ghosts and they put a sheet over me at night and tuck me in and I poke out eye holes so I can see.
I don’t believe in ghosts and when we die our souls go into our old phones and belts and bits of tat we thought no one would ever see.
I don’t believe in ghosts and I won’t sleep in a haunted room.
I don’t believe in ghosts and they keep me alive and flow through my blood and keep me up at night.
I don’t believe in ghosts but they believe in me and keep me going and give me reason to live.
I don’t believe in ghosts and that spider is my grandpa.
I don’t believe in ghosts and that cat is my uncle.
I don’t believe in ghosts and when my sister sings my Booba cries and my dad cries and my mum cries because she sounds just like my late grandma.
I don’t believe in ghosts but relatives of my late grandma who haven’t met my sister will stop in their tracks when they see her because she looks just like my late grandma.
I don’t believe in ghosts and the uncle who lives through my cat will never die because she will never die.
My cat doesn’t believe in ghosts and every so often she will stare at a blank space and jump out of her skin and sprint downstairs.
I don’t believe in ghosts and my grandpa hugged me in a dream after he died and we hadn’t spoken in months and it felt real and I don’t remember the last time he hugged me in real life.
I don’t believe in ghosts and they live in each word I write and no one ever dies.
I don’t believe in ghosts and my past self haunts me with every mistake I make.
I don’t believe in ghosts and I don’t want to be cremated just in case I have to travel the world in bits.
I don’t believe in ghosts and I saw a clock move round and round of its own accord for no reason.
I don’t believe in ghosts and when I hear the recording of my late grandma singing at the beginning of my sister’s song she’s here and I am meeting her.
I don’t believe in ghosts and I am one myself and I make people shiver and avert their eyes.
I don’t believe in ghosts ghosts and I don’t believe in ghosts ghosts.
and I don’t believe in ghosts and I don’t believe in and I don’t believe in ghosts and I don’t believe in ghosts
and I don’t believe in