We Have Always Been Ghosts
of each other. You were in awe of me,
how quiet I could be. You, prettier
than all the pretty girls, curls spinning out,
girl underwater. Slept in the desert
and woke up with a limp. Spoke your first curse word
and gave away your tongue. You, a vanishing
line, a horizon, a shadow. Admit it: you floated
through California tonguing all the myths
whole, the sand gritty on your teeth. Admit it:
you wrote yourself a tale so tall you ended up
in heaven. I’d rather be a girl than a ghost,
so I tell you about the boy on the street corner,
how he learned to whistle my name. You -- after --
a slack-jawed angel, white nightgown a concession
for ghosthood. There is only one version
of this story: the legend of kids disappearing into girls,
losing their names in each other’s whispers.
I followed your shadow, learned how to arch my brows
just right, how to crouch on the fire escape
and watch the earthquakes. Look at this. Look how you make me
whole. We slipped switchblades
in the back pockets of our jeans, spray-painted
backdoors. I named my knives after you. We cried
in the desert. California. I hid snakeskins
under the bed. When you found shed scales
I told you they were mine.
of each other. You were in awe of me,
how quiet I could be. You, prettier
than all the pretty girls, curls spinning out,
girl underwater. Slept in the desert
and woke up with a limp. Spoke your first curse word
and gave away your tongue. You, a vanishing
line, a horizon, a shadow. Admit it: you floated
through California tonguing all the myths
whole, the sand gritty on your teeth. Admit it:
you wrote yourself a tale so tall you ended up
in heaven. I’d rather be a girl than a ghost,
so I tell you about the boy on the street corner,
how he learned to whistle my name. You -- after --
a slack-jawed angel, white nightgown a concession
for ghosthood. There is only one version
of this story: the legend of kids disappearing into girls,
losing their names in each other’s whispers.
I followed your shadow, learned how to arch my brows
just right, how to crouch on the fire escape
and watch the earthquakes. Look at this. Look how you make me
whole. We slipped switchblades
in the back pockets of our jeans, spray-painted
backdoors. I named my knives after you. We cried
in the desert. California. I hid snakeskins
under the bed. When you found shed scales
I told you they were mine.
Gayatri Rajan lives in Andover, MA. She's the Poetry Editor of The Courant and the EIC of The Tavern. Her work has previously appeared in Kissing Dynamite, Glass Poetry, Eunoia Review, Write the World, Creative Minds Imagine, and elsewhere. When she's not writing, she's making artsy moodboards, listening to industrial pop, or drinking far too much tea.