“I woke up this morning completely tangled up with a child who snores and sleeps with eyes almost fully open. His bony feet are always kicking mine, he head-butts me in the ribcage half the time, and turns and elbows me the other half.  I got up, granted myself the slow luxury of French press coffee brought back to bed and read until he woke up and began to read too.”

I found the above, with the picture, in my drafts here.  I’ve been working on a post that’s kind of a complicated synthesis of lots of stuff, but I feel bad that there hasn’t been a prompt this week, so I was digging through the archives of unposted half-started almost-thoughts.

Tonight I was at work until pretty late.  And tomorrow I’ll go to work pretty early. I worked hard today.  Cleaned my desk.  Wrote some emails.  Did some poems.  Figured out some technology.  Smiled at some people who didn’t exactly deserve it (you know who you are, haters).   When I stood up to leave work, I thought, “I’m a complete fake.”  I don’t know why I thought that.   But the ghosts of past insecurities can be mad hard to shake, can’t they?  They haunt me sometimes as I walk home in the crisp cold.

I think about ghosts a lot.  Not just because of Halloween, but because I like the idea of ghosts.  I like that so many people who are otherwise devoid of magical thinking sort of believe in them.  And I like that I am as qualified as anyone to define the rules of ghost hood.  I like believing that there are things I can’t see and can’t know.  Even living people can be ghosts in absentia.  Social media can make everyone you’re ‘friends’ with a ghost in your decision making process even when you’re alone, if you let them.  And I can haunt someone if I want, even while being alive (though it’s frowned upon).  Here’s a ghosty poem for you.  Do with it what you will.   (And by ‘what you will’ I obviously mean write a ghostly poem and haunt my inbox with it)

by John Philip Johnson