Anyone's Ghost

by August Thompson

I wanted to say: Build in me a lighthouse. Be guided by the love I feel for you, for the safety I want to offer. Put knives in your wheels and leave the truck until it’s ticketed and towed. Move your bags into my room and stay. Find a job at a record store, become a security guard at the Met, don’t work at all, and we can live off my twelve-an-hour as you make every record you’ve wanted to. We can take it slow; we can move fast. You can leave me and come back. You can be exactly who you are or you can be what you’ve always wanted to be. You can sell that gold twisted band, and we can find a studio in Queens, and I can cut your hair every other month. Let’s live off rice and beans, oranges when they’re in season. Let’s make friends and forget them for days and weeks at a time. Let’s ward off all of the terror with talk. Let’s make love over and over, until our ribs hurt and we think we’re tired of it, then do it once more, just to see if there’s still life to be made.