The things we carry in our pockets

Three generations of items –
old souls that linger in
pocket watches and pocket squares.
Old handbags passed down with
change still clinking in pockets, zipped.

Yesterday, after walking through
a vintage store on Magazine Street,
my friend stopped me on the corner,
shook her arms over me
like she was her own Palo Santo
on fire, and cleansed me
right there, our feet planted
over keys incased in sidewalk concrete.

Two seconds of fingers shedding
the skin on my arms,
because sometimes the things
people carry for three generations
shouldn’t follow you out the door.
And sometimes, someone else
sees what’s lingering on your
shoulders like a black fog
and they say, ‘no more – I’ve got you -‘
and you’re lifted out of it.

My lover sees ghosts.
He had one threaded to him
he says he picked up by accident in
Native American country.
From simply being there,
in a place he shouldn’t have been,
unknowingly stumbling on what
he somehow knew as
The Structure;
a power that owned the dust.

The ghost lived with him
in the corners of every room he
inhabited for years until
one day, it left.
For the time that it was with him,
he was terrified – but still can’t fully
explain how when it made its way
to another place, a loneliness set in.

He still misses the unsettling.

Because, some of us don’t want
the brushing off.
Sometimes, we want the
scary parts to stick.