there. push through the man’s sleeping chest. you’ve got it. you are just as ghost as you believe. imagine your loved one come to you and say I am ghost and you love them so much they’ve reached that space where they can’t be wrong or crazy, just themselves being. imagine your lover saying I am ghost and pushing hard on the wall and then saying she’s through and with satisfaction. what if she also says something completely true and germy like: people can do without you. they have and they will. before they met you they were without you and while you are with them you are not always, unless you are ghost. I am ghost and now I’m always where I say I am because I say it and perhaps this is enough to convince you to push through your lover’s chest. you will rouse him, sure. and he will ask what you are doing. be honest. say, “I am trying to get to the pit inside you where I lost something valuable.” say you are ghost and you are making your way in, in. say this and by the response you will know how thorough the love. it is thin, of course, if he goes toward his own belief and need. it is thin if he questions what else makes you ghost beyond the declaration. thin if he says you were not ghost yesterday or when he met you. everyone knows that what you are changes no matter how still you sit. if he calls a bigger name to come and take you, it is thin. he don’t believe in you with enough risk and unearthliness. make joke of it and leave him in the morning.

but it is thick if he surrenders, follows, amends. says, how deep you trynna go? can I help? I felt you there already, I think, if you thought I did, if you wanted me to. I’ll will the feeling. make it up like everything else we make up which is everything. time. fire. words for things they say we don’t quite make up the yearning for like “need” or “love.” then you know he has the space-making ability to usher in a new love: a sense of yearning to be taken and done something with. and he’s lying like the rest and maybe the surrender ain’t real, but listen to what I say and make it the thing you need it to be. push through your sleeping lover’s chest and there will always be an in. go.