This guy named David Beauchamp
used to host one or two ghosts at
every meal.
I watched him, sometimes, serving food
to an empty table.
I couldn’t tell exactly what
happened to the meal,
but it always
disappeared.
He drank
beer on Friday nights
with a poltergeist
at a local dive called Rosie’s.
He said once
of the spectres all around him that
they were lonely, he was lonely,
it worked out — and
what did it matter anyway
where you put your trust — in the dead
or living? Suppose, he said,
they’ve lied about being dead, the way
so many people do — suppose I’m already
dead? Would I even know?
Better, he said, to just give up
this fantasy of life
and move along. We don’t have a clue,
anyway, he said,
about what it means to be here, or there. Better to make peace:
come down on a Friday night and have
a beer or two or three,
and some small talk
in Rosie’s back room.
He put his head down on the table then.
He never saw me. I put my hand on his neck,
and held him, gently, until
we faded away.
