Sunday Scribblings #120: Ghosts

On Poplar Street at the foot of our bed, we feel it pressing on the mattress, like a cat kneading. We sit up to brush the cat off the bed, only the door is shut. No cats. We remember that insistent push and the next one, too. There is no denying that it happened. We don't even speculate on what it could have been. Who.

No cats in the room, too, when our roommate feels the tap-tap-tapping on her head. Like water dripping, she says. Only, no water. No cats. What happened in this apartment? We don't speculate.

In a dream he beckons, outside my bedroom window. Two stories up he floats in his gray corduroys, gesturing with his hand for me to come. Tossing his hair off his forehead in that certain way and that small smile. His crooked teeth.

The cats hiss, fur like porcupines and tiny sharp teeth. They see what we can't, and we laugh uneasily. Crazy, we call them. Psychotic fur balls. We shiver and toss those thoughts away, although we are not bold enough to say, "There's no such thing."

I can't come now, I tell him in my mind. I shake my head and will myself to waken. In my sorrow, I banish him. Like a proper ghost, he sinks, bare feet on the soft brown soil.

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