Poems - 14. P.V., OR THE GHOST THAT VISITED ME

Since I don't believe in ghosts
I was surprised to see you sitting on my bed, close
to the window. After discovering that you
wouldn't raid the fridge or increase the electric bill
I decided that I could
let you stay. You became persistent soon enough. You would
wait standing in the bathtub while I sat
on the toilet and pretended I didn't need to combat
throes of shyness before finishing
my business. I didn't mind. Everything
deserves a smallish sort of privilege
now and then. I read you poetry and classics. I let
myself pretend I was educating you, a regular Frankenstein-
I don't think you did mind
even though you were always quiet.

You never explained why you did it.
While at night we lay politely side-by-side, I discovered
that you were physical enough, observed
how your constituency was not the harsh cold
one might expect. But it would be odd
to presuppose a temperature, wouldn't it? I think
often of a dream I had, in which every exfoliation of my skin
bore your initials, microscopically: P.V.
Seeing as you were there, I had every
chance to ask you what they stood for and what it meant,
but I wrote it off as simply something I dreamt.
In any case, soon after you left.

One supposes theft
whenever something goes missing. I know
I was ready to take thumb-screws to the klepto
next door, a retired woman and rather nice.
You don't know how near things came to an apocalypse!
In any case, you left and I went about
sleeping and taking the garbage out,
eating, reading the same things I read you
to an audience one person less. I waited no undue
lengths of time to change the sheets.
Nor did I right away change the sheets;
nothing changed. If I wondered
more than once what might be soldered
onto my epidermis, it was only
that I wondered. I guess it was out of dignity
or that it was easier to exist than to become.
I did not complain. I picked up a tome
of ghost stories one day, and studied as I could
what ghouls and freaks to other people did.
Some got it right while others, I think, lied.
In any case, time and I went on, survived.
You became bits of flaked-off skin, keratinized, dead.
And I was naked and cold.