After the Ghost Investigation
       

The local writer on the paranormal with her camera,
electromagnetic meter, and infared thermometer, having
stayed, as she explained she must, long past sunset,

came back downstairs egg white-wan, silent. Her colleague,
with his day job in law enforcement, looked lost as the ring
of brown feathers left after a cat runs into the bushes.

You have them. We found you two. In the room beside our
bedroom, in the room behind my office. Her voice might
have been shaking. Just old spirits who don't care to leave.

Not harmful. The one upstairs doesn't know he's dead.
I offered brandy, which no one wanted. Later, alone, or
perhaps not, my husband and I went to bed and addressed

our new-found guests: How are you, Mr. Ghost? No—that's
disrespectful! No—you can't really believe... I turned off
our bedside lamp and the darkness I'd once understood

occupied itself fully, grew larger and larger—a black
bloodstain, a backwards mirror glinting what sorrow?
A distant headlight? Or just the flickerings ghosts know,

caught here if they are here, never driving away. These
walls, see how they've changed from what they used to be?
Our bodies, too: how they change without our permission...

...and see how long, how very long night lasts?

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Copyright © 2018 Christine Potter All rights reserved
from Unforgetting
Kelsay Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission