It’s not there
But I feel it
Where the ring used to be
On the wrong finger
A band of cold a band of pressure
From a ghost of a pledge
I twist the naked skin
The skin says: nothing
The nerve says: remember
Phantom itch
No wound to stitch
A memory the body won’t unlearn
A bridge the mind burned
But the feet still yearn
For the fall
Phantom itch
The worst kind of switch
Is the one that isn’t even there to throw
A kiss on the shoulder
The left one
But the air is empty and the room is sober
Yet the patch of skin erupts in a goosebump map
Of a country that exiled me
I scratch
I leave red trails on a blank page
A biography of absence
Doctor says it’s in my head
I say “Of course it is
That’s where the love was lodged
That’s where the bomb went off
The shrapnel migrated south ”
It’s a sympathetic echo
A pain for a pain that’s gone
An alarm for a fire that’s been out for years
The sirens are baked into the bones
Barometric pressure dropping
A certain shade of blue in twilight
The opening chords of that one song we never liked
The smell of rain on hot concrete
your cologne had that note
A laugh in a crowd that has the same pitch as hers
Every “trigger”is a ghost tapping on the glass of my now
A polite persistent tap tap tap…
“Remember us We live here
In the amputation ”
Phantom itch!
A psychological glitch!
A skipped record in the spine that says
You are not fine you are not fine you are not…
I’m scratching at the wallpaper of a room I moved out of
I’m digging for a splinter of a soul I never had
Phantom phantom phantom…
And now…the center of the back
The place you cannot reach alone
The exact latitude and longitude
Where his hand would rest a warm anchor in sleep
Now it’s a frozen star
A spot of relentless icy tingling
I contort against doorframes
I am a question mark asking a wall for an answer
The wall is smooth
The itch is a mountain
It is migrating
From the finger to the shoulder to the back
Now it’s behind the eyes A dry unshed weather
Now it’s in the throat A swallowed hiccup of grief
Now it’s in the palms An urge to hold the shape of nothing
I am the haunted house
And the haunt is me
A full-body whisper
A circulatory system of maybe
Maybe it was real
Maybe it wasn’t
Maybe that’s worse
