Page 18 - Musings 2022

The Ghost of Her
Dhruv Dugar
2020A1PS1322P

Whenever I drive long drives and forget to think deep thoughts,

whenever I hang my hand off the ledge of the armrest,

I habitually roll around the emptiness that fills it

The emptiness that falls through it like

The nothing that it is.

Then my hand remembers what hers felt like against it.

How they pressed like lovers, little versions of what we were,

Knotted together, wrestling into the bedding of sunlight and pollinated air.

Somewhere off that leather ledge lives the ghost of her palm, floating on,

And my heart still ties its spirit to this world where I still reside.

Now I’ve gone and mentioned the heart, oh, the heart!

The ache that follows from clutching at nothing,

Is as measurable as the nothing that fills an empty hand.

I can easily imagine the panic and make it so by simply remembering.

In the corner of my eye, the sun steals her shape.

How could it even attempt to take such a lovely form to fill?

Something so golden, like the light when it swam in, and through her.

I dare not turn to face her,

For if I do, she will fade into the nothing I know she is,

And I will be left singing only to myself,

And a heart ready for any reason to jump deeper to the depths of me.

I don’t believe in the dead.

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