In less than a month, unlike you to care about the wreckage of the Titanic that is my heart. I have witnessed you stampede on and trample me barefoot. Yet, the teeth you bared is what I have come to expect.
Family taught me (for better or worse) to murder with mercy. When you were flashing your baby teeth, sharpening like knives, I was practicing my smiles in polished glass.
Unlike you to offer condolences or express empathy, and yet, the past few days, while Lazarus has been in the tomb, a different side of you has been exposed.
Unlike you to show warmth, still a reptilian cold underneath, but the air is a bit milder now – less frost, less chill.
Unlike you to offer benevolence and yet, a crack of a smile, a beginnings of generosity.
Is it possible you were murdered by my mercy? Killed by my kindness?
Or did New Year’s resolutions just fall a few days behind on this calendar?
I’m not one to gaze the gift horse in the mouth, but I do have my suspicions when you were flashing those fangs, honing them like knives, and are now sweet as spun sugar.
Just call me Doubting Thomas if your kindness only lasts as long as Lazarus was in the tomb.
An architect constructed you a mansion for your heart and you called it a cage. He crafted each room with so much caution and care.
The muscle nestled between your ribs felt like a boulder I was incapable of swallowing, I am a myth, tugging on strings that have strangled me.
My fantasies were polished glass shards shattered by laments and heartbreak. Ancestors draped mirrors with black organza in bereavement after a loved one died. The fabric is as light as a ghost, so tell me, how did I still I wake up with bits of glass crunching beneath my feet?
The sadness was a fragile creature – the weight of black organza – and yet I am a myth, desiring nothing more than to pull the strings that choke me.
But it’s gentle sometimes, sneaking in like a moth, as soft as a ballerina’s skin and barbed wire.
Our wires danced across the dance floor, and if you watch, we might just choke on the memory, the softness of sadness, and the gentle lull of love.
In March of 2009, the poet Rachel McKibbens introduced the poetry community to the concept of the “ghost line”. McKibbens defines the ghost line as “an inspiring line or image that becomes the unseen first line of a poem”.
The poet Ollie Schminkey provided their readers with a poetry prompt on April 9, 2025.
The prompt is as follows:
Use a line of a lyric from a song you have been listening to as a ghost line.
Here are a few more “ghost line” poems.
i: rain
These shapes I see in the darkness all conform to your figure and your cologne is like petrichor but faint. I think if I listen to the silence long enough, I can hear you whisper my name. (Don’t tell anyone – they’d think I belong in bedlam.)
But, as I trace raindrops along my windows, I remember scribbling in my Latin book, Amantes sunt amuntes – lovers are lunatics – and it doesn’t take the taste of rain to know the truth.
I’ll continue to watch the raindrops trickle down and chase shadows in the dark, but I won’t surrender to the madness because this is love and every silent evening, I whisper to see if I can hear your echo.
ii: changing seasons
Here we are, chasing these temporary highs like nightcrawlers leaning close to their radios, begging for a fix, but in a sad state of panic, you told me you thought your blood froze to ice (and you said you didn’t want to self-destruct to stay warm).
I offered you a cigarette, but you shook your head and said, “I don’t want a solution for my problems – just someone who can commiserate.”
So, we went outside in autumn and watched the leaves change colors for a while. You told me, “It’s nice to remember that even dying can be beautiful for some.”
iii: hiraeth
Every broken bone I never set right aches on me as though I have been falling asleep in airports. I’m never where I want to be because I swear, I don’t know where I want to be. Is it homesickness, even if you don’t know where your home is?
I traveled a thousand miles from here just to end up back in this wasteland and I booked a train ride out of town because a girl with straw-blonde hair read from the Rider-Waite tarot deck, telling me to leave this city behind.
(But everything hurts when I remember the details.)
I watch it all like it’s a dream. I pretend it’s not my life, but that has to stop.
Everything hurts like an unexplained car crash, but even though I’m a thousand miles away, I’m the one behind the wheel. (And is it homesickness, even if you’re already home?)
“A term invented by author Gregory Venvonis to describe the devotion to positive spiritual growth amid underlying darkness.”
Though the glimmer might be eradicated (from time to time), it is always capable of shining again. Though it can be hard to see when cloaked in midnight, your mind is capable of fabricating untruths like a ruthless politician or an adversary.
(It’s why we tried to give the enemy a name – to make him easier to talk about then just an abstract concept.)
But the boulder that buries itself on top of you, smothering your breathing and swallowing your light, is also capable of eroding.
It might feel like centuries have passed you by, but just know – after every winter, we see flowers blossom.
You, too, will blossom again. I will resurrect from this darkness and discover my light from within. (Even if I have to excavate my soul like some damned archeological dig.)
It’s too easy to surrender, but we’ll fight through the frost, push past the sparrows’ wings that beat furiously against our bones, and surmount our devils.
(The ones we have named and even the anonymous ones who prefer to cower in the darkest places inside us.)
Isabelle Palerma 