melissaahowells - Only The Lonely.... (its not about what you may think...)

there's a hole behind
another closet
one that I can't see

its where they live
where they hide
where they sneak
slip through
from the other side
from a place
I won't be

I see them
out of the corners
I hear them
throw small things to the floor
I taste a bitter-something
and I feel a trembling floor

they want to know me
I've sprinkled them out
with sacred salt
and sacred wisdom
from the old ones
the elders who've little doubt
they
could be trouble

they might be sad
they might be lonesome
the sort of lonesome
I don't want for company
the kind of lonesome that could grow
impatient
and go mad
borrow sorrow
for me

they have flexible shadows
that stretch across the floors
they have flexible extending fingers
that tap the windows outside
and tap my outer door

they like to thinly whistle
they like to trick
they like to whimper-wail
deliver their whispered lines
to gather goose bumps
to make little knicks
into the outside
crumbling brick

they were
too soon gone
too early left
too miserable maybe in their lives
bemoaning funerals
where few showed up
and none were properly bereft
where relatives argued loudly
over knick-knacks
instead of shedding tears
and paying a modicum of respect

earth bound spirits
impatient specters
lost and lonely ghosts
regretting their past
and borrowing the lives of others
because they have back then
what they needed most.

I am thinking of a childhood poem from a great big anthology
called Time For Poetry that my Mother gave to me. She found it
at a Farmer's Auction...not one of those happy affairs where
people want to retire and they are selling their things so that
they can retire someplace warm...but because they have lost
the game of life and are covering their debts so they can move on
to who-knows-where? There was a poem in there called...A Goblin
Lives In Our House. This and a lucid dream is what brought this
...Only The Lonely...on.

LEGAL COPYRIGHT FOR THIS POEM 3:49pm July 4TH 2021 TIME AND DATE STAMPED
AND ALSO FOR THIS WRITER MELISSA A. HOWELLS. AND ALSO FOR THIS LEGALLY
COPYRIGHTED AND REGISTERED SITE TITLE MELOO STRAIGHT FROM HER TILT-A-WORLD