on authorship 

i have a new ghost writer.
i often catch him
sitting at my desk, writing
in all my journals & filling 
my computer with half-finished 
Word documents.

i tell him that's
not nice, that he can't
just come in & write 
under my name. 

this happens more often than
you might think that a dead writer 
will come back 
to haunt a living one.

he won't tell me
his name, when i ask 
he just recites my own. 

it is important to treat
a ghost writer well,
no matter how stubborn.
i feed him dried fruit &
granola. 

i brush his hair when
he's upset, hanging
his head & sobbing.

it's difficult to get
a ghost writer to open up
about anything but this 
one did tell me that in his
life he never got 
to publish anything.

he won't tell me what he
had been writing but sometimes
when i'm laying in bed
i imagine that stories he
might have written. 

the ghost writer doesn't 
need to sleep so i learn 
to tune out his toiling
& destroy it all in the morning:
tearing out notebook pages 
& dropping files 
from the computer desktop 
into the trash. 

he thinks i'm cruel. 
i also think i'm cruel.

there's some days
where i feel like i should
just let him write 
as me. he follows 
me all day after all,
who better to write 
under my name?

i buy him crossword 
puzzles to keep him busy.
we sit across from each other
at the coffee shop.
i watch him while he isn't 
looking: his wrinkled white
button-down shirt, his glasses
on the end of his nose.

i will miss him when he 
finally moves on.