I used to sleep with the lights on, afraid
to glimpse shadows of dead men on the wall.
My mind used to populate my childhood
bedroom with staring eyes, hunched figures,
the quiet shuffle of uncertain feet.
My father told me that ghosts were just
demons in disguise, while my mother
collected stories of the unexplained
like stamps. When he was out of town,
I’d sleep in her bed beside her, hushed
and warm, as she told me of the spirits
she’d glimpsed—faceless men and gray
figures cutting through the room. The smell
of smoke when her sister died two hundred
miles away. Her father coming to her mother’s
bedroom window years after he’d been gone.
We lived two lives—one when he was home
and one when he was away, different shows
and dinners, given over to our restless, eager
hearts. And behind every word, every look
on my mother’s face was that other self,
the one she kept hidden. A ghost story
all its own.
Savannah Cooper (she/her) is a leftist bisexual agnostic and a slow-ripening disappointment to her Baptist parents. You can almost always find her at home, reading a novel or cuddling with her dogs and cat. A Pushcart Prize nominated poet, her work has been previously published in Parentheses Journal, Midwestern Gothic, Mud Season Review, and multiple other publications.