In My Place

The smell of the beginning of October pulls things out of your head that you haven't felt in an earthly rotation.

The other morning, dragged out of a hungover bed to the sound of a number I didn't recognize, I found myself talking to a ghost.

Lovely had decided that he was alive again.

His other half had dropped out on him. He was everywhere and nowhere and talking to me.

It wasn't his number. He was unreachable except for that moment. I hung up and stared at that dusty box gold box in the corner.

It was the first morning of fall. I was fourteen, sitting on my porch steps again.

That fucking porch.

I dealt with it, stayed away from those pictures of him, and considered it a random witching hour that had simply momentarily raised the dead.

That is, until I found myself standing in a loud kind of quiet hallway, where the dust dances in the sunlight against the background sound of expensive learning. He had called again. Another number, another exorcism.

And this was one I could call back.


And so here I sit, feeling like I've been resurrected back into the month that is in my blood.

Here I sit, at the edge of a very large circle that has taken years to draw into the leaves.

And here I sit. Terrified. I thought I was done. I had put that photo back into its box.

But now that number is staring at me like that house down the street used to.

For the first time, I know that I'm not the only one who can't let go.

Perhaps we're both ghosts.