distance (part twenty-two)

When I think of the words "crushed pearls,"
I imagine you giving me a kiss above my right temple,
      right on the skull,
      on the hairline--
sweet,
deep;
the pressure of your lips, on that part of the skin that causes the blood to rush to my cheeks and my head,
almost as if to reassure me of something,
or just to comfort me.

This always seems to happen with you--
      the tall flame on the wick melts the candle,
      and when it seems my thoughts will end as nothing but a muddled pile of wax,
      you unintentionally tip it so the flame is passed to another wick,
          like passing the light from candle to candle during my old church's Christmas Eve service,
          right before we sing "Silent Night,"
and so on, and so forth.

Almost any song with the word "ghost" in its title is a song I like.
Sometimes the ghost is him. When it is, I get chills. I get the bends.
      The heat rushes up to my throat and lingers there, and I feel sick
      for a second, before the sensitive goosebumps on my arms catch the sensation
      of the memory of him passing by,
          or passing through,
      and I am cold for an hour or so,
      listening to sad songs for the rest of the night.

When the ghost is you, I am frightened.
Feelings have never gone and come back with such force,
      every
      single
      time
like the feelings I associate with you.
You pass through in waves, back and forth.
The heat reaches up to my jawline, lifts up my chin,
      not like a captor taking a good look at his prey's soft neck,
      but more like that moment of peace and comfort when the sun is out and the weather is nice, after a long bout of storms.
It spreads up through my whole head, easily seen under the transparent skin,
      which is not as soft as it once was,
until my skull is awash in sunlit warmth,
and I can barely restrain the corners of my lips from being pulled upwards.

He was the bridge to which my bungee cord was tied,
my feet pushed off from his edge.

I once thought you were the air into which I sailed and plunged;
but please could you also be the cord that keeps my body from breaking at the bottom?

Haunt these hallowed halls,
with these groaning walls.
The house still stands for a few reasons;
make you one of them. Make you stay.
I held a séance for no one in particular,
And you crossed over.
You have not left;
You walk up and down the stairs,
sometimes stopping,
But I swore I heard someone breathing deep, sighing heavy, into the wall against my headboard, on the other side, where no one sleeps.
Maybe I was dreaming, but I heard a door open and close, and open again,
when no one else should have been home.

Having seen you in the flesh
Does not prevent these warm-shivered dreams from raising the hairs on the nape of my neck.

My skin is most transparent at the temples,
where you can see my spidery blue veins,
where I keep imagining you kissing me
whenever I think of crushed pearls.

-Dana Winter