I roam my home and sit with ghosts, one ghost in particular. I roam with my perfect-man ghost and think this is why dating proves complicating. I’m thinking no man competes with perfect-men-ghosts. I’ll roam and think and sip my tea, infuse it with honey and cloves. I’ll sip and think that someday my flesh-man might meet my ghost-man and my worlds might just collide.
I eat meat on one dish, dairy on another and the two of them are never together. Dairy and meat are not to meet. I wash dishes in separate sinks. A dairy sink. A meat sink. I consider my bathroom sinks meat since I am flesh stretched cross bone and filament. I eat alone, chew slow, dip my tongue in honey and cloves. I consider honeying my pressed lips, keeping my lips together, keeping myself together while keeping—my ghost and my man, my meat and my dairy—apart.
I sit still, restrict the urge to touch myself, knowing it’s only steam-release, knowing if I self-touch, I’ll sit with more loneliness, even if my ghost is near. I still sit. I restrict. My ghost unable to touch me. Stillness turns me edgy and those tiny mishaps, like a dirty dish in the wrong sink, steams me. I sit, restricting and steaming—all necessary disciplines. I’ll redirect that cloved energy. I’ll alchemy, channel into something surprising, something that turns my head.
In stillness, I dream of butter-slathered bagels, chunking pieces onto my tongue. I’ll sing for that sting of salt and sesames crusting my honeyed lips. The kettle sings while she steams and I brew a Chai with cloved honey and dollop one controlled spoonful of cream. My control pays well. I tell myself to brew a mental buffet. While still, I’ll turn to Limon, Laux, Dubrow. I’ll lose myself in words and turn dog-eared pages. Lose myself so I don’t lose myself.
I control myself in weighted dreams. Weights draped cross me. Sixty pounds holding me down, holding me so I don’t roam too soon, though my ghost coaxes me towards sky. I soar in my dreams, control my body in night-flight, restricting space and time. I still time. I move space. I move nearer Light—re-fill, re-fuel, prepare for tomorrow. If there be a tomorrow. And if there be a tomorrow, I’m prepared.
Tomorrow, I’ll sip and eat and forget my preparedness as the sun cascades ’round earth and my body-pain sinks through. Despite my ghost-mate, loneliness drapes, cloving and crusting my dreams. I’ll forget I’m a spiritual creature trapped in body, draped in skin. I’ll forget I’ve filled myself the night before, forget until my flesh-son hugs me, his skin steaming of meat and dairy and boy-dirt. His scent stills me in that one particular second, and in that second, my ghost departs, and I am lone and lost until I remember. I remember. I’m still. I’m here. I’m still here.
Rebecca Evans’s poems and essays have appeared in Narratively, the Rumpus, Entropy Literary Magazine, War, Literature & the Arts, the Limberlost Review, Tiferet Journal, and the Normal School, to name a few. Her work has been included in several anthologies. She’s also served on the editorial staff of the Sierra Nevada Review. With an MFA in creative nonfiction and another in poetry from Sierra Nevada University, she’s completed her full-length poetry collection, Tangled by Blood; and is editing her essay collection, Body Language; and her memoir, Navigation. Evans served eight years in the United States Air Force and is a decorated Gulf War veteran. She’s hosted and co-produced Our Voice and Idaho Living television shows, advocating personal stories, and now co-hosts a radio show, Writer to Writer. She currently mentors teens in the juvenile system and lives in Idaho with her three sons, Newfoundland, Chiweenie, and Calico Cat.