Let me tell you about ghosts, ghosts.

So I wrote on the book, "May you find your way..." So I sealed the envelope, and heard something crack in space, somewhere else. The clink of gates in my head, the sound of chains scraping rough walls.

Six months caught fire behind me. The spring and summer shooting into the ocean like something falling from the sky. Why the same huge orange moon tonight? Why do the dead flowers all explode at once?

Was it me who named it the ghost city? I won't look back to the archives and watch all of the words in flames. All this moving under so much silence.

I named it the ghost city and thought of the ghosts in her apartment. Some of them glowed in the dark. There was spider in a glass box on the wall. But mostly there were ghosts, ones you could see and ones you couldn't. A severed holographic eye dangled from the keys to her apartment. I don't remember where her apartment was.

All of these words moving under the silence. Give the ghosts names and they will fly away. Some destructive act of speaking, the words catch fire as they leave the mind.

On the bracelet there were scenes from Coney Island in the fifties. I paid too much money for it. When I left the little store I knew I was doomed but I did it anyway. Later in the bathroom I put the bracelet on my own wrist to see how it would look. Her wrists were exactly like mine. I forget the phrases that were on each of the little discs. There was "Elevated Train" and "I [Heart] Coney Island," most of the signs on the disks are gone now, I think. I took a picture of a blue manta ray on one of the stone walls. On the beach she told me there were plastic manta rays in her bathtub. I never saw them, I but I believe that they are there.

Listen up ghosties, this is poetry.

There was a stone rabbit caught in the cement that formed the base of the lighthouse. We were walking from Vineyard Haven. There was an ice cream cone melting on the street and she said that was like death and I didn't ask her what she meant. In front of the wall on the beach I kissed her and the lights went out in New York City. Standing in line for the ferry the mobile phone rang. "I miss you." On the ferry other mobile phones were ringing, little blasts of Beethoven's whatever, chiming bells. People were talking about the lights going out. There were seagulls hovering above the ferry, matching its speed. "The lights are still on in Boston," somebody said, and "What the fuck am I going to do?"

So I found the address on the computer and wrote the name on the envelope. A ghost name that appears everywhere. The way you think you see somebody out of the corner of your eye but they're not there. Were they ever there in the first place, even when they're there in front of you? They're there. Their there. There there.

She was wearing a black dress and we were on the esplanade. She had Coney Island on her wrist then. She said she was afraid and I kissed her. I can't remember what it was like. There were lights on the water and stale Chinese food in a box. She didn't look away when I turned and went out the door she needed sleep and I can never sleep. I turned back and saw her still watching. I saw the ghosts and the monsters behind her. The air conditioner hummed.

"Gethsemane" she said in the email later that week. She saw the word Gethsemane. There was no need to meet her at the airport.

I could see my breath when I went to the mailbox and it swallowed the envelope. "May you find your way."

The ghosts in the confessional box rapping on that funny lattice. I wasn't raised Catholic. I only know this from the movies. Speaking the words the author is dead and the actors turn to specters on the page. The ghosts speak what is verboten. Will someone read this and be angry? I will never know, I can already see the keyboard through my hands.

We punched five holes in the cover and put on the yellow stripe. It was Halloween. The pink dress in the trunk of her car in August was for Halloween she said she said she was going to put blood on it.

I signed my name and didn't recognize it. The mailbox swallowed the envelope, what will happen now? Speaking to ghosts and to silences, the little yellow book went out into the silence.

On the last day there was orange paint on her foot, the same color as the walls of my room. I touched the paint. She was talking about a man playing piano. Coney Island was replaced by pearly shells, she showed me it on her wrist and laughed. She did not look back when the phone rang and she went out the door. I bought a bottle of wine and walked home, it was still hot but August was dying.

I put the photograph of the hot dog stand in the mist in a drawer I don't go in, I put the photo of the manta ray and the severed hand there too. She said the severed hand was the best part of the movie.

An egg came out of the machine with the mechanical parrot. The parrot had an English accent. In the egg was a little top. Another egg produced the same top. I put the top in the drawer with the red checker I found on the beach and the bobble-headed rabbit, too.

"Certainty is always elusive."

Four months ago on the phone message she said "Look at the sky right now it doesn't get any darker than this." It was already dark out when I listened to the message, I tried to remember what the sky looked like at 8:45 but couldn't.

The story itself becomes a myth, a fable. The presocratics, I think, were concerned that the written word would make people forget. They were concerned that the story would get written down on paper and the person writing it would forget.