Haunted

 (12/19/2020 c)

I like to sit in bars and look for the ghosts of old boyfriends.
I haven’t had a single sighting yet.
Of course, chairs rattle. Floorboards creak
as an unseen hulk passes like a cold, winter draft.
Sometimes there is a silhouette, a fleeting
but distinctly human shadow cast in tease.
Once I took a photograph, hoping for orb backscatter.
Instead I captured three pool players giving me the bird.
Electromagnetic field detectors don’t work.
Hunting is all guess, imagination and wild conjecture.
I wish just one man was here.  There is danger investigating alone.
I always pack gauze and ointment.
What would I say if I saw them, if they saw me seeing them?
It all seems cruel. To say that I equate their dying
with abandonment. They should have attended to
their blood pressure, the faulty heart, the lure of pills,
the second chances that were last chances.
That I take their deaths personal. Crueler still,
to tell them what I’ve done since they left. 
All those Mai Tais, the faux honeymoon in Vegas,
in Mexico, the lovers and one-night stands,
especially the one who knew all the right moves,
books they recommended that I didn’t get around to reading,
the blood, the spleen, the body, all that terrifying breathing,
the letting go. The letting go.