hauntings

“I’ve been here once before,” she said as we pulled into the lot, “Would you like to know with who?”

“I already know,” I returned.

Reggae music wound and pivoted, the bass thumping down my spine from the speakers behind me, luring me to islands, but it wasn’t working. The lights were too bright, and tho yellow, it wasn’t sunshine. The beer didn’t even taste right, tinny, like the tall can in which it’d been delivered. The waitress’s smile was a practiced effort; in another place, at another time, she’d be huddled crying, and somehow she knew that I could see her truth. She she didn’t linger.

We talked about ghosts, old loves, people who’d danced into our lives but who hadn’t stayed for the last song, becoming haunted-waltz memories. They gathered as we talked, wishful apparitions watching us from over her shoulder, tho she’d been unaware, each and all still wearing their dancing shoes, and then they danced with each other, cold skin pressed against frozen hopes, tho still watching us, imprisoned behind pale-yellow bars of light.

I have wine. I might post some things.