Today's poem is Rendezvous with Ghost by Cate Marvin. It is read by Julia Bouwsma.
Rendezvous with Ghost
Did it transpire to rise from beneath the floorboards?
Did it escape into the room through a heating vent?
Suddenly, my head, palpable as an apple, felt its eyes.
The folding chairs woven into the room by their rows.
The shining caps of knees bent that belonged to bodies
that sat with ears attentive as rabbits struck midfield
by a passing motor. The poem being read gave us back
the image of those metallic blankets underneath which
migrant children in pictures slept. It was then I felt it.
It was not like saying It has been so long, where have
you been, though I felt that. It was not like saying, Nice
you finally turned up, where's my ice cream? And though
it did tickle, I once read about a person who was tickled
to death. It felt like the opposite of death, which means
I felt my hands lying like quiet historians on my lap,
as if my books had been alphabetized behind my back.
I'd been waiting so long I'd given up. I'd always hoped
it'd be grandiflorous, sweet as a clove cigarette, or shot
through with delinquency, circumspect. It was a fancy
fashioned from the idiocy of loneliness, bad as a shark
movie, sad as an orphan's eyes in propaganda in which
the child you sponsored did not exist. It is memory like
this. Once, we curled inside an elegy like a worm inside
a jumping bean. Afterward, I stood and left, walked
the halls of the historic hotel, found my face in a mirror,
and told no one. But I love him. I love him. I love him.