I Had Seen a Ghost

The realizations trickle down slowly

From head to heart like rain on a roof

I thought I was over it

Maybe a thousand times over

But I guess the organ in my chest

Never got the memo

My inner protector can yell all she wants at you

"Go away! Shelby needs her space!"

But you still stand there, very quietly

In my dream world and waking thought

Boring holes into my skull 

With your mystifying gaze

I thought I saw you yesterday

His movements made him a dead ringer

But his shoes were the giveaway

I don't think you'd ever wear those shoes

I felt myself blush all the way into my feet

And shuffled away, my heart pounding

As my daughter asked "What's wrong Mommy?"

I guess I looked like I had seen a ghost

Mornings are the Worst

I wake up slowly, the grey November seeping into my consciousness, warding away dream remnants, chasing out the wishes of a bright summer. It all comes back to me, my skin crawling with familiar regret, my head filling like a pitcher with a year's worth of memory. It's been a long time since there were two of us in this bed, but in sleep I still feel the safety of presence, the warmth of a body no longer there. 

I drink enough coffee to bring the dead to life. I smoke enough cigarettes to calm my sunrise nerves. I blaze through the past on a bullet train of thought. Reminiscent nostalgia takeover. I am no longer my own. 

"What a waste of a heart," I say to myself. "To spend so much love on a soul who cannot even feel it." 

Like putting money down the sink disposal and throwing the switch, I just keep tossing these sentiments out into the universe. My chest keeps pulling me, magnetic, towards the future, where it hopes it will find him waiting with flowers. 

But all the benches we pass, my heart and I, are empty, all the grocery store lines devoid of familiar faces, and the fantasies we weave of serendipitous events fade into the background of reality with every passing bleak twenty-four hours. No letters are ever ours to open, no two AM phone calls ever missed as we sleep. My heart and I, we are disappointed, still hoping for better, kicking through the dirty snow of shame. 

Keep Dancing

                The gym is quiet, almost eerily so. A few burly men lift weights in the corner. One woman, sickly thin, frantically runs on the treadmill. It’s 11 pm, Friday night, at the local 24 Hour Fitness. My responsible friends are all asleep; my friends determined to explode through their early twenties like dynamite are out drinking vodka tonics and going home with strangers. And I’m here, alone. But I prefer it that way, anymore. I’ve started to enjoy my own company.

                I walk, silently, practicing being graceful, into the studio, the room with all the mirrors. You know the one. Zumba happens here. Kickboxing and spin classes happen here. Depressed, heavy-eyed young women choreograph dances in the middle of the night here. (Or is that just me?)

                I toss my gigantic fringed purse onto the floor. The loud thud reminds me that I need to clean it out. There are about seven lipsticks in there. Crumpled bills line the whole bottom of the bag. Coins and my keys jangle together in an irritating melody. There’s a book in there on how to overcome your daddy issues, right next to a book called How Not to Write a Novel. My wallet, fat with coupons that will never be used, pokes precariously through the top. There’s also, of course, my phone, a couple of McDonald’s toys that I never unwrapped for my daughter, and three e-cigarettes, all out of juice and with dead batteries (the quitting smoking thing isn’t going so well for me).

                The purse, like my life, is basically a mess. I try not to overthink this as I take the speaker and set it up right in front of the mirrors. I turn on all the lights in the room. Sitting on the floor, I begin to stretch, remembering with a deep nostalgia that I used to be able to do the splits in high school. My grandmother, who is in her seventies, can still do the splits, and has showed me many times. It’s like a party trick that she pulls out at Christmas. I’m so disappointed that I, at twenty-three, with fifteen years of dance classes behind me, can barely even lean forward, at this point, if my legs are in a v.

                I stare into my eyes in the mirror. I am stretching. This burns. This feels good. My eyes are, as I mentioned, heavy with depression and exhaustion. But god damn it, I’m going to dance tonight. I came here to dance my sadness out. I came here to dance you away.

                Moments later, the music is starting. I stand still through the intro, launching myself into motion as the lyrics unfold. I try not to feel it, try to push it away with my body, try to push through it with the fluidity of my movements, but it still comes up. That feeling of heaviness, of sorrow. I’m choreographing this dance for you. It hurts me to admit it, but the dance is yours. It’s about you. I can’t deny that it’s about you.

                My first memory is from the backstage area at a dance recital. I was three years old, and in a bright yellow costume. My mom even let me wear lipstick, so the stage lights wouldn’t wash me out. I think the song I was dancing to was “Lollipop.” I had a gorgeous Italian spitfire as a dance teacher. The memory has nothing to do with the actual dancing, but I think there’s something telling about this. Even in my very first memory as a child, I was preparing to go on stage and dance.

                There’s always been something in me that wanted to perform, that wanted to be seen. I was a cheer captain in high school. I was the social butterfly at all of my jobs as a young adult. I remember bringing my guitar to work one day when I was a button-pushing, paper-stapling tax assistant, and playing and singing on the roof for a handful of coworkers. I used to busk on the streets of my hometown, even. Something about the spotlight suited me.

                When I met you, your eyes were the spotlight. Your gaze was my stage. I remember playing guitar for you, too, in parking lots and bedrooms. You used to make me feel like the most important person in the world. Hanging on my every word, actively engaging every syllable. “Is he always so intense?” my mother asked when she met you. But that’s what I loved about you. Your intensity. Every moment with you, I felt like I had won something, like I had done something right and been something significant. The best writer, the best mother, the best fiancée, the most beautiful girl in the room – I felt like I was all of these things when I was with you.

                You’re gone now, I know it, and as I twirl around the room, occasionally falling on the floor in total frustration, I feel the weight of it, the weight of your absence. I can’t find the right movements for this eight count. I can’t find the right words to express how much I miss you. The air is a thick fog, and I often break down in this bright room full of mirrors, watching my contorted face cry for you like a lost child cries for their parents.

                It hurts.

                I face the mirrors again, red faced, mascara-smeared. “Five, six, seven, eight,” I mutter to myself, and begin again. And again. And again.

                If this is the only way I can get it right, if this is the only way that I can articulate what is wrong and what has changed, if this is the only way that I can fill the void that you left, that I can pick up the garbage in your wake, then I will keep dancing until my legs break beneath me.

                I’ll keep dancing until I don’t feel so alone.