The Care Of The Reaper Man

All houses are haunted. Everywhere I’ve ever lived has been haunted

houses x autonomy

A HOUSE AS AN ENTITY OF ITS OWN

hauntings + obsession, pt 2 (pt 1)

not tomorrow, but one day—that sleeping quake in her will erupt & the whole house

will be on fire & she’ll be gone so quick he’ll wonder if she was ever real, maybe

just a night vision or a made-up thing like a Jackalope or Medusa or God.

The past cracked open like a milkweed pod, burst in a great soft cloud of light and floated off on the westerly wind. I remember an orange leaf that cradled a raindrop that reflected the whole world; a purple marble found in the playground dirt. I remember a statue of a crucified Jesus and a photograph of a dead man. They watched over me in my sleep. None of it exists anymore. Now the house is just a house. The spiders in the basement are someone else’s problem and the ghosts are only air. I reach into my pocket and find nothing. I rub my fingers together. Pray the rosary on what’s not there.

In December I watch movies about ghosts with a woman I call mama though she is not my mother, only a woman who is kind, this all I require. We take breaks to lean against each other on the porch, her sucking smoke from between her fingers, exhaling its skirling; each mouthful dissipating, becoming something like air. My breath’s a less impressive phantom, fleeting silver in the cold light. Standing there in our small shadows, we discuss the ways of the dead, their metaphysics, as if we were experts by osmosis, a certain knowledge absorbed. I say I think our ghosts become us, or at least reside in our dark like tenants we haven’t the heart to kick out. She says, though she hasn’t quite figured it out yet, there are rules: not all of us get to be ghosts.

We are afraid that someone will come into our house when we don't want them to. We are afraid that the thing we fear is already inside. We are afraid we can't make it leave. We are afraid the lock on the door will not hold.