It was every horror film I had ever known
seared into one. That faceless figure
at the window; a child's giggle on the phone;
that impossible shadow across the ceiling;
an ectoplasmic wisp in a polaroid like a question
mark beside my ear. The twin who died
instead of me; the ex-lover who jumped
from his flat; the friend I betrayed to the police
who hanged himself in prison; the younger sister
I asked to walk ahead of me on a busy street.
I stayed clear of mirrors, kept walking when I heard
a hissing whisper, and did not dare to turn.
Yet even in this dream I found it comforting
to know a ghost could do what it wanted;
what I failed to accomplish in real life I could
finish from my grave. The truth came
as death by another name. An axe dragged
across my mind, watery footsteps of
my conscience creaking up the stairs, a knob
twisting this way and that. In this script, I did
not deserve to live. This was the final point.
Before I knew it, I was standing at the window,
watching my lover take off. Or I had become
frozen by the pavement, incapable of grabbing
my sister’s hand once more. Except, then, I
was the one plummeting, whom the headlights
were pinning to the dark. I would awake
inside a coffin. This movie would end
days later when a stranger wanders into my home,
its rooms yielding no trace of me. A mirror
in the toilet would hang speechless, and a sound
from that window would only be the breeze
and not the sound of somebody weeping.
