Ghost Letters

One day I’ll leave and I won’t tell anyone where I’m going.
I’ll take my body with me,
But I’ll throw my photo albums out the window as I drive away.
I’ll leave a crime scene of all my memories smeared down the road.
Pictures and pictures puked across sun baked pavement like fresh deer guts–
A carcass no one cares about until their car crashes into it.

I’ll send you letters.
I’ll lie to you.
I’ll tell you all of the fantastic lives I could be living—
A different letter for each different person in my life.

My sister will say I live in Las Vegas now.
I had a bad coke problem, but things turned around.
I met my highschool bully in rehab, and we fell in love.
He didn’t know he could love boys as much as he loved the burn of clean white destruction in his nostrils.
We own a pawn shop downtown, and we’re thinking about kids in a few years.

My best friend will say I’m a nomadic therapist who drives up and down the West coast.
I leave my calling cards on gravestones and bar fronts.
Like bootleg DVDs, I run therapy sessions 24/7 from the trunk of my car.
I teach the brokenhearted how great it feels to kill yourself and come back again.

My ex lover will say I’m a millionaire who lives in Miami.
I flip houses and eat diamonds for breakfast.
I have a reality TV show in the works.
I forgot how to cry, and I feel naked without a camera on me.
Life is a never ending sunset.

My mom will say I’m a cancer survivor in Santa Fe.
After all the chemo, I never let my hair grow back.
I keep it shaved, and I work at a church in a greenhouse.
I teach recovering drug addicts and high school dropouts that we can grow fruits from worm infested dirt.
Growth is a game we can play. Sometimes we win, even though we all have to lose.

But don’t ask me for the real story.
Don’t you dare try to find me.
I’ll never go back to the life that you barely knew me in.
I want to stay a ghost— a puff of smoke that almost looks like a person.

By Sean Catino