Shadows burned on sidewalks.
Smell of sweat in chambray. Prints left on a headboard.
Less beer in the fridge, no milk, and this dead leaf
tracked in. The cat let out, a whiff of weed
and scent of someone else, once in my bed.

I thought I coined this turn of phrase
for what we leave behind. Choose instead
fluke phantoms, or coincidental wraiths.
Random unplanned apparitions. Humans
in the abstract, mist on film.

Who can tell when ghosts eclipse us,
where our memories cease to take up space.
Begin to seep through walls and unchain time.

Blast shadow stains the front stoop. Decomp
paints the carpet. Echoes plague the wood floors,
too-small closets. The presence of an absence,
in my haunted head. Poltergeists and moths
bump in the night.