there are exactly two ghosts
waiting on the coughing heating pipes back home

while dawn wests & we leave the party
a stray bottle rocket. we leave as that

which does not want to leave.
no one is following us. we pretend our life is

ordinary or complicated. we the film
that begins with a scene

where an older man opens a door, says
i’m not the person you’re looking for

but of course he is.
i know the living fractures thin.

i know you are there, your sliver
of death cloak shadow, just barely visible.

i blow dust to confirm my assertions.
i blow dust to make you visible again.

we point at all the little ghosts around us.
they aren’t frightening anymore.

they stop bumping in the night.
they start playing cards with us

on wednesdays & dance with us fridays to RnB records,
& we begin to prefer them to people.

we eat in more now too.
my apartment is a botanical garden

of chopsticks & plastic utensils
from all around the world, manufactured in china

& brought to brooklyn, just for us.
& the forest of napkins you call magic,

as they do their dance over the sea
of kitchen linoleum when the wind moves

through them & we know it’s not us nor the ghosts,
but something else bigger than us & ghosts

making them dance. it’s my dreams
made visible. i know you are there. they thought

i’d become a priest
because i could feel the dead my whole life coming back

& staying dead, a blow of dust,
but i want to kiss you,

so don’t come back from the dead merely stardust
& atoms. i know how to conjure up.

i know how to dance to old soul records,
the sound of a radio’s fuzz in nowhere montana,

where night is the only thing with arms around us.
& we are older now.

we don’t have to listen to people.
i know what people are about.

i know how they can be,
fearful of what dances in front of them.

people have to know who is closing the doors
to the room they’re in, but i don’t care.

people are their own kind of ordinary
baroque, hiding from the grandiose

star encrusted light from within themselves.
people hide in plain sight,

which we both know
is the most dangerous kind of hidden.