because I am one. We all are. Big empty corridors filled with lilting melodies and cobwebs where dust motes and dead insects have been caught and strung up for the all ghosts to see. 

The ghosts are versions of ourselves we’ve abandoned, laid out to dry, left out to burn. Finding them dressed in Victorian sleeping garb is a weird coincidence. 

Within me is a childhood home, a bungalow in Chicago, a suburban rental, a freshman dorm room, and a cottage perpetually soaked in rain. They’re stacked against each other under my skin, wall to wall, brick to stucco to rotting wood with thatch roofing. Inside each, another ghost waits for me, fed up with my visits, reluctant to let me back in.

I’m a lurker, they tell me, a parasite within myself, unable to move on. Don’t they know that ghosts can be the living too? Ghosts can live inside bright eyes and tight smiles, ghosts can haunt your bathroom mirror while you brush your teeth, staring back at you while you contemplate skincare. Ask, did you take your meds today?

 There is someone behind me, not there when I look and she follows me into the bedroom where I lay in darkness and contemplate saying yes to that boy in middle school. Squint hard enough and I’ll see - ah, there she is. Hanging above me. Eyes and mouth open wide. Like a ghoul in the rafters. Is that blood on the ceiling?

Give her the opportunity and my ghost will hide inside my chest, my hands, my throat. The next time I feel vulnerable she’ll remind me of her possession. That I’m a haunted house. A ghost cage, a drafty mansion, a final girl, a woman running through the moors wearing white.

This piece was previously published by Livina Press