Things to Tell Your Ghost By Vicki Iorio

I need to tell you I still want to pop that blackhead on your back-
the one you wouldn’t let me squeeze
even after sex ever after.

I shiver when I think of your skin
melting in the crematorium-
did that pimple explode or did it
shrivel like your dick
when you decided I was too ugly to fuck?

I need to tell you that your lawyer won’t let us die,
the legal papers shape shift into you
while waiting to get notarized.

I need to tell you that here, on the beach,
your ghost is a trick of sun glare,
sea birds pick at your eyes every time the tide comes in.

The bartender who is now my boyfriend
sweaters me in whiskey when he sees your name
appear out of nowhere on my arm.

I need you to stay dead.
Skip Halloween.

I need you to stop haunting my love life.
Do we need to discuss this over coffee at Starbucks?

I know you poltergeisted my bathroom mirror-
a shattered mess on the tiled floor,
my feet bleed every morning when I brush my teeth.

I know you unscrewed my light bulbs
and hid them under my pillow.

I need you to know I am no longer afraid of the dark,
you’ve lost your incandescence.

Vicki Iorio is the author of the poetry collection, Poems from the Dirty Couch, Local Gems Press, 2013 and the chapbook, Send me a Letter, dancinggirlpress. You can read Iorio’s work in Hell Strung and Crooked, I Let Go of the Stars, (Great Weather for Media), The Brownstone Poets Anthology, The San Pedro Review, The Mom Egg, Crack the Spine, The Painted Bride Quarterly, The Fem Lit Magazine, Redheaded Stepchild Magazine, The Paper Street Journal, Poetry Bay, Home Planet News,Concise, Cactus Heart, Rattle on line, South Florida Poetry Journal, Five:2:One Magazine, RatsAss Review, New York Times, Poetry Super Highway, Eratio Poetry Journal, In Between Hangovers, Conches, Anti Heroin Chic,  and Misfit.

Photograph by Lidija296.