nina the ghost

honey

“Jonestown: Paradise Lost” on VHS

Your ghost is leaving gifts again. This time a documentary you so kindly taped for me back in 2005. It’s been sleeping inside an old backpack in my parents attic. Your hand writing, so distinct. I can almost see you biting your pen. I gasp the tape, whispering, “Julien…Julien” Your name has a familiar taste. Its been ten years. Your ghost remains. It slips love letters in the pockets of old sweaters I slip on to smoke in the cold. You are a winter, mourning. A sad story.

If I had a dollar for every love letter poem mix tape film or song you ever wrote for me I would have enough money to adorn myself in gold. But I would still be alone, with a thousand reminders of your passion. Remnants- Evidence that although you may deny it now, you did love me and for many years. In fact you were drowning in it. I keep a trunk of old letters- it is a graveyard where we slept, in love in pain broken content. Dealing with god and the devil, disappointing your grandfather, living in a motel room, an accordion, fighting over a bottle of pills, you punch me, a stolen cash register, astral projecting to visit you in jail- coast to coast moonlight lulled to sleep by art bell. Julien julien ill scream your name into the ether, I stand squinting into the slanting rain. I remember hitching to Seattle for you to tell me to not to stay. And if you gave me the choice to drink the kool aid or the choice to walk away I would still have my fill even drink the kill schwill so I wouldn’t have to feel this pain, again.