this one is old, from when i was still in a poetry class last semester

I hope this poem reaches you, before daybreak sears away the ash from your eyes
and dust mites cloud your vision as you stretch and leave your paper-thin cotton coffin,
with the burden of insomnia nights on your wrinkled brows as you weather storms
of your world and mine. Yet you still carry yourself, dust it all away with a laugh and smile.

I hope this poem reaches your empty hands before you carry things again, because
I need you to wait– notice the slices of the moon crescent then phase out of your fingertips,
then turn your hands over and study the red warmth immersed in your palms, even rivaling
the star in the sky, flares arcing along your skin in orange undercurrents. You’re alive.

I hope this poem reaches you, before you turn over a cold shoulder to your open cage door
while you burrow deeper into no one because I’m not there for you to rest your head on,
though I wish I was a person you can rest with– I haven’t been feeling full of myself
as of late, like I’m a walking ghost wearing yesterday’s clothes, wishing for tomorrow.

I hope this poem reaches your eyes as you close them and dream of me, pale as I am
since I’m bereaved of your presence, an absence spanning land, space and small seas.
Still, I yearn for your skin, the color of soil and clay, to bring me to life again, but you are also
a grave I want to be buried under, not quite on the other side yet, but always by yours.

I hope this poem reaches out to the thoughts swirling you, bed-ridden under your headstone
because I’m not there to counter the current– ghostly fingers can’t touch mortal matters,
especially if it’s your unfinished business and not mine. Still, I try my best to whisper through
the smoke and mirrors to keep your feet on the ground, to help you take steps I can’t walk.

I hope this poem tells you how your spell has bled itself into me, buried deep in my mind heavy
with nothing but thoughts of you and your name engraved next to mine. I’m animated only
by your voice calling out to me over distance and time, to form your hands around mine.
But, for now, while I wait for our clock to start ticking, I’ll keep living until you’re the death of me.

Signed,
your Ghost