SILLY LITTLE GHOSTS

My aunt once told me

Hold your breath while passing by the dead’s home

You wouldn’t want to risk

Being on the other end of their jealousy

Or for the poor souls to fill your lungs

My face would be blue

By the time we passed a burial place

Eyes scrunched as I let out

The last wisp of real air

Fresh from the ghosts I feared

My sister would giggle from her side of the car

My mother would chuckle from the driver’s seat

How unnecessary, dear

How paranoid you are

I would swing my head side to side

Cheeks puffed and mouth shut

Until the final headstone flashed from my window

My aunt once told me

Slow and steady on the rocky shores

You wouldn’t want to hit your head

On the sharp stones

That could crack your little skull open

The piercing agony would leave your pleads gasping for breath

Her hands would be hovering over me

Like I was a diamond in a tornado

Shining through the dark clouds

Ready to be thrown out into any direction

Ready to be caught by scarred hands

Such pale and clammy hands

That when I try to grip them

When I try to save them

They slip right through my grasp

There are headstones surrounding me

Sticking out from the razor-like rocks

The ocean’s waves are reaching for them

She couldn’t even tickle them with droplets

My eyes wish to be scrunched shut With the oxygen leaving my lungs by the second

But slow and steady I must be

For there are no hands ready to snatch me to safety

Something is screaming for anything to fill my lungs

Even the specters that observe me

Their empty eyes drill a hole into my head

Their cold and dead hands grip my wrist

As bumps pop from my skin

I’m so close to the sand

So close to salvation and yet closer to the loss of breath

I gasp as my feet are caught on one of the headstones

The ocean is silent for once

As the observers turn curious

Turn hungry

Hungry for what they would never have again

I feel them enter my breath

Enter my own soul

They are thousands of piercing ants

Crawling around my head

Scattering stinging agony around

Flashes of endless scenarios-

I could’ve ran

I could’ve never followed him

In all those possibilities of fraying threads

Thousands of roots from an oak tree

There is not one where I could’ve been saved

There is one voice that stands out

From the bombarding pain that is

As deep as the ocean

And as scorching as the fire surrounding me

My friends are envious

The ocean’s drowned victim says

Sending chilling ice slithering down my spine

What a shame

My aunt says.