i still cannot bring myself to meet your ghost

this hesitation is not for show.
there is horror in this- not titillating horror
but pure sick fear. i recoil as if I've met heaven.
what have i done? you are near, but there is a line.
i erase, rub out, redefine.

how alike am i to those girls,
girls who wrote you too-zealous love letters?
you shuddered and tossed them in the trash,
the paper cut-outs, foil stars, mix CDs. nothing compares
to what you had. nothing beats a memory.
cellphone towers now carry her thin breath to you,
packaged like candy from old country.

you are not thirsty like you say you are.
sometimes you turn your head and believe you will always be alone.
you have gone through great lengths to secure your solitude.
you keep her under glass in your phone.

i cannot touch your ghost. it is secondary in my vision:
it is a concession, an indulgence;
on my part a shivering and wholehearted consent.
perhaps, the most frightened i've been all my life.

only in concept will you be near me.
only in theory. trust your sorrows to me
(do i trust myself to your sorrows?)
and let them lay me to waste as they've done to you
(i cant even imagine what you've been through)

yes is yes - yes means yes
and i say, yes.
i break backwards singing, yes
please oh yes- (open my arms,
slit me down the belly like a surgeon,
white static becoming our breath,
yes- of course silently, SILENTLY- yes.