"residual haunting" by Sarah Fannon
I have burned candles
in the home of my body,
cleansed the air of apparitions.
I have lain sea salt at my door
like a line of white ants.
It’s spring and I am out
of the ghost zone.
Parallel months have reached
the end of their train tracks
but this time I get to move forward
instead of stalling out—
what a difference between one
melting winter and the next,
from mercury in retrograde
pulling the rug out from under me,
to two planets sharing a prograde orbit,
dancing to Whitney with somebody who loves me
in a stained-glass cathedral.
This time the vernal equinox
is warm and this time I have you.
Sometimes at night,
slumped in the corner of my eyes,
I see the me who felt her body
turn to corn husk, discarded after use.
I look at her now and feel exorcised.
She has come so far, so much.
I am no longer the cuff on a cold shoulder.
I am nights I never want to end
and mornings made more alive,
waking up like tangled tree roots.
How good it feels to be in
something that grows.
Sarah Fannon is a graduate of George Washington University's Honors English and Creative Writing program. Her work is featured or forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, CHEAP POP, Dark Moon Digest, Diabolical Plots, and elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook Believing in Ghosts was published by dancing girl press in 2021. Find her online at sarahfannon.com.
Instagram: @ampersarah
Twitter: @SarahJFannon
Related Posts
See AllWe pour shampoo into Norah’s hot tub, well, not her hot tub, her parents’ hot tub, but we’re the ones using it, and we want bubbles. It takes a lot to overcome the chemical treatments, but eventually
amanda palmer presents to me a man o' war where my face should be pink-brained siphonophore water pocket dry popped dead upon the sand where she beached me white and blacked like weimar and worri
A chill wraps itself around my neck and needles make a knot inside my right fist. The right joint always raised red flags, even when I chose to chalk it up to acidic butterflies, especially on the nig