would believe all my ghost stories
but she did and had better ones than me
growing up on the navajo reservation
she spoke of skinwalkers coyotes which crawled
into men and scoured the low scruff between
ranches picking off sheep or cats
and sliding back into the chaparral
as a lost cousin whose body was never found
or the time she and her sister drove across
the red plains at night and saw a hatch
open in the sky and a clutch of lights
enter and the drawer of black night
shut again and they didn’t get
anyone to believe them
but i did because why
would she make this up?
and i have felt my departed family whisk
by me i have felt a dead foot step
on me as i slept on the floor
of my wife’s uncle’s house
which creaked with 2 am footfalls
i have lifted up the protective screen
on this plane and seen the wormholes
and snakewhirls burrowing it is so nice
when someone can also see but this is
something not to talk about and not to retell
and we will shut this window now we will talk
nice to the tilted gray woman in the trainstation
which is now a brushgrown parking lot
we will close all the doors except this one
where each of us is an inside-out ghost
walking in bloodpelts where each of us
will go out of this mansion one day
and leave the floor cracked

Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. His latest book, The Long Blade of Days Ahead, is avaliable from Impspired Press. More of his work can be found at ferrypoetry.com