The ghost that twists in the basement
is a remnant of me.
My fears have fed him over the years,
giving shape to his collar bone
adding flesh to his thighs.
Every road
that I have yearned to take and refused to venture on
has given fodder to this ghost.
A few years ago, I saw the demon had grown too big for his cell.
No, he was not caged.
He had stayed of his own will.
He liked to stay inside my head, he said.
He became a tenant who refused to pay rent
and never seemed like he’d move out.
I had pity on him,
let him squeeze my brain,
let him leave his fingerprints on the inside of my skull.
Maybe he’d leave after a month or two, I thought,
and kept feeding him,
till one day he grew so huge,
my head was too small for him.
That was when I decided only one of us could stay.
That was when I stopped gift-wrapping my fears for him.
He began to throw tantrums like a child being deny his favourite toy,
he would sulk in a corner for nights.
I let him mope,
pretending I could not feel him trying to gnaw at my eyeballs.
It’s been a year since then.
The ghost has shrunk to a quarter of his full blown size.
I’m waiting for him to shrink into nothingness.
It will happen slowly, I am told.
NaPoWriMo 2017, poem 23
Grains of thought 