There’s a fucking spider on the ceiling

In my house

Well

in my parents’ house.

Not my house.

Not my childhood home

This is my home now,

hometown

though I choke on the word childhood.

I was sixteen when I arrived

a girl, yes,

but not a child.

I think a lot about ghosts

and being a stranger in places.

I am a stranger here,

though my face hangs framed on the wall

and my high school prom dress hangs l

in a body bag upstairs

I think I am the spider

a little unwanted,

a little unwelcome,

small enough to ignore.

Clinging to the walls,

searching for comfort,

knowing

this is not where I’m meant to be.

I keep a drawer of teeth

from the words I bit down

instead of saying.

Some still sting

when it rains.

when it’s quiet.

when I’m alone.

when it’s sticky.

Some I press to my tongue

just to feel something familiar.

No one teaches you how to archive people.

So I tuck them

in the folds of my skin,

under my nails,

inside the walls,

between my ears

where the silence is loudest.

Every now and then they move.

Shift.

Remind me they’re still there

I hang on to other people’s teeth too.

we’re standing too close for strangers,

too far for anything else.

you pass the cigarette

like it means nothing,

and maybe it does.

or maybe it’s the most honest thing

either of us has done in weeks.

mouth to mouth.

your exhale in my lungs.

I don’t know what I’m keeping.

I don’t know what I’m trying to prove.

you say something about a movie

I didn’t see.

I laugh anyway

because I want you to think I still

understand you.

because if I ask what you meant,

you might realize

I don’t anymore.

I keep looking at your hands

like they’re going to explain something.

they don’t.

you ask if I want another hit.

I do.

of the cigarette.

of your nearness.

of whatever this is

that’s not anything,

but lingers like it might’ve been.

we keep doing this

sharing breath like it’s casual.

watching the end burn down

without saying

what it is we’re mourning.

maybe it’s nothing.

maybe it’s the softest kind of grief.

the kind no one warns you about.

the kind that smells like smoke

and sounds like someone you used to be

laughing in the wrong voice.