it’s hard not to look in the mirror and feel like something else, something not quite yourself, the ghost says. maybe I’m just a sheet with eyeholes cut into it. an empty plastic bag with big ideas. a jellyfish washed up out of the sea.
have you ever seen a washed-up jellyfish, I ask. it looks like a shower cap full of gelatin.
that’s exactly how I feel, the ghost says.
today in particular I feel like a plastic bag, the ghost says.
The ghost amends: air trapped in a plastic bag.
Amending again: a plastic bag with the bottom ripped out.
I point at my balcony windows. The crown of the neighbour’s tree floats just beyond the edge, like a ghost, like a jellyfish.
there’s a plastic bag stuck in there, I tell the ghost. it’s been stuck since last January. right in the middle.
We both stare hard for a long minute but see nothing. Just the green green green of the tree waving in the breeze.
it was easier to see in the winter, before all the leaves grew around it, I say, finally, sighing.
And then: they say the handles are the strongest part of the bag.
And then: it has a happy face on it.
do you think it’ll blow away one day, the ghost asks.
won’t we all, I tell the ghost.
—
Dessa Bayrock lives in Ottawa with two cats and a variety of succulents, one of which occasionally blooms. She used to fold and unfold paper for a living at Library and Archives Canada, and is currently a PhD student in English, where she continues to fold and unfold paper. Her work has appeared in Funicular, PRISM, and Poetry Is Dead, among others, and her work was recently shortlisted for the Metatron Prize for Rising Authors. She is the editor of post ghost press. You can find her, or at least more about her, at dessabayrock.com, or on Twitter at @yodessa.