A Hungry Ghost

by Anna Ruiz

The house is empty
and the walls scream
as the paint freezes
and the floorboards creak
in this alliteration of silence,
out of the mouth of depression
I pull myself upright
I am resolute in exhausted
Personified in hollow
No one is home but
these ghosts of what was
how it could have been
how it might have been
how it should have been
but wasn’t.

My children fly, crash and sometimes burn
they tear across my heart, scorch my soul
I have
even forgotten
how my marriage once
tasted, when it was delicious, before cold scraps fell
from the table,
and the stains of my dog are long dry
now, though I often find myself
running
on his behalf.

Running nowhere fast with this time I hold
in my hands and all that I see is
a still birth of another me,
losing heart, losing light
lost in what is,
I am disappearing in this river I am,

quietly drowning in my words.