stevieqgray

I went away for a break end of May/beginning of June. I came up with this while I was there:


In a foreign city,
your restless ghost still finds me,
walks beside me
down cobbled continental streets
banking arrow-straight canals,
drifting some 300 miles
to stand with me
in the fine, indifferent rain
of another country.

This place was mine
long before I was yours.

So what are you doing here,
haunting someplace you've never been?
Why show up now,
insubstantial and unshakeable,
coming to me
down some narrow, red-lit alleyway
you haven't walked?
How is it
that I came here to escape something,
only to find
that it had arrived first?

Your ghost doesn't answer my questions,
just smiles an untouchable smile,
and slips away,
leaving me alone again
in the Amsterdam rain.