Codependency with a Ghost—Angel Rosen

The apparition has made herself at home
and is eating my Fruity Pebbles.
She asks me if I have any almond milk
or a smaller spoon. What a peculiar haunting.
What a major disappointment—
I can’t bring this to show and tell.
She is an unreliable anecdote.

My guest asks if I can borrow a book for her
from the library. I suggest she do it herself,
encourage independence. She said they will ask
for an I.D. and she doesn’t have a face.
I tell her we will compromise and I will
get her one book, and one only, so she
chooses The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

I doom-scroll while she dog-ears public property.
I open a new tab and search “roommates or girlfriends?”,
looking through the plethora of memes and tumblr content.
She looks up from a page and smiles.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she admits,
I shake my head and tell her about a recipe I found.
She tells me that my thoughts are 
her thoughts, borrowed, and that she will need them back.
The library book is due on Tuesday and it can’t be late.
I insist I am looking up how to make 
pumpkin cookies.  I live with the oven preheated.
She says the stranger of things between us,
but I am the one who gets to tell, gets to show.

What happens when a dear love turns to dust,
becomes a bunny, and hops out from underneath
your bed frame? A haunting all along Reynolds Avenue,
a contract between lender and lessee expiring,
coming up on an anniversary of a day that doesn’t exist,
never existed.
I take the book back.
My cereal box becomes full,
my spoons unshrink,
and my one-bedroom becomes a
place without inquiry.
I turn the oven off,
the coffee pot on,
and I open a new tab
to search for something
I haven’t thought of yet.

photo by Ioana Han (via unsplash)