Ghosts

I've been haunted by three ghosts lately.

The first is a recurring dream in which my two-year-old niece and goddaughter gets loose and either falls or jumps into a pool as I scramble to save her. Most of the time she stops breathing but last night, she didn't fall in, she jumped in. And she started swimming. Of all the BabyHeart dreams I have, she and the mystery girl appear the most. But once the mystery girl told me she was Gracie, I haven't dreamed of her again and it makes my heart feel heavy and sad.

The second ghost is a house I walk past every day on my way to work. I didn't realize it was there until the second or third day. The house I stayed the night at after I left my ex. Two male friends of mine let me sleep on their couch. I remember a group of us sat around talking about poetry and music. The last thing I remembered was drifting off to sleep during a Jack McCarthy slam poetry documentary... not knowing that some day years later, Jack himself would book me for my first "big" gig in another city and would come to be a very dear friend. It's funny how things work out.

The couch belonged to the only friend of mine who ever called my ex a jerk without fear of being overheard. I remember my ex found out I stayed with my friend and he immediately accused me of sleeping with the other guy and having an affair. He let me sleep on his couch because in the almost two years he'd known me, he had seen me cry far more than I'd ever smiled. He was trying to give me hope. And he did. But every day I walk past that front porch. I can remember the instructions he left me as I woke up alone and tried to figure out how to work the shower, how to identify the randomly colored masses passing for food in the fridge before skipping breakfast altogether. But most of all, I remember the toothpaste. The all natural stiff metal tube with the thick paste that didn't quite taste like "clean" but it was better than nothing and I was grateful for the extension of another person's love for once.

I remember it every day. Hard to believe it's been eight years and I still manage to wind up a block away from where it all began. Where my rock bottom met my do-or-die reflexes and we all learned how to swim.

The third ghost is a photo from Venice. a picture my friend posted online, standing in almost the same location as an old boyfriend of mine once did when he sent me a picture of the city lights. The boy who swore he loved me and wanted to be with me forever. The boy I waited for time and time again... the boy who later told me *I* wasn't good enough to marry HIM because I wasn't "the right kind of person."

The boy whose legalistic ideologies led him to believe God doesn't approve of falling in love with girls who have been raped, girls who change their hair color as often as their shoes, girls who have tattoos expressing their walk through hell with God telling them all along "just five more steps and it'll all be okay"...

But it will never be okay. Not for him. The one who made me feel completely worthless and yet I continued to believe if I was the one person in his life who didn't walk out on him, if I was the one person who showed him that love really can conquer all when you CHOOSE to let it be your eyes. The one who continues to shun me but secretly ask all my friends about my life.

He is the ghost I am most haunted by lately and I can't figure out why. But I know how. His memory manifests itself in anger spread across my chest and arms, thinking of all the times I told him I loved him and held him close. Just the though of saying those words to him feels like vinegar on my tongue.

I'm not angry because he was a coward and ran away. I'm not angry because he judged me unfairly and persecuted me for another person's sins. What angers me the most is that I settled with him and I knew it from day one. I settled and I gave up on the one person I truly wanted to be with. The person I'm with now. It's funny how after four years I'm right where I first began all over again.

It seems to be cyclical in terms of love and loss.

My heart is angry because I gave so much that I can never get back to someone who didn't see value in me or the love I brought to the table.

I can't undo that. And now I have to love twice as hard because for the first time in my entire life, I'm standing on level ground. Toe to toe with someone who loves me so much it hurts both of us to breathe.

It angers me that all the butterflies of my past left my lips only to die in someone else's hands and remain in glass cases collecting dust in someone else's basement memory. And yet, when DJ speaks, he brings the butterflies back to life and I can feel them fluttering from a thousand miles away, trapped in worthless glass cases.

I guess that's the thing about love. You can never un-say it or un-mean it no matter how much you want to.

Tonight, the butterflies lie anxious in my chest; they've never before met their match.

And every day is new.