Ghosts
[Nayo Jones]
I keep going to the river to pray
'Cause I need something that can wash out the pain
And at most I'm sleeping all these demons away
But your ghost, the ghost of you
It keeps me awake
[Jasmine Combs & Nick Stanovick]
Some nights I wake up screaming
Jolted from dreams
My parent Visits
[Jasmine Combs]
The shadow of my father’s voice shouting my name
His jaundiced eyes staring past me
[Nick Stanovick]
A mother’s bald head seared red from radiation
Her face warped into a blur of unrecognizable skin
[Jasmine Combs & Nick Stanovick]
I wake up scared and shaking
[Jasmine Combs]
Like the little girl who’s in trouble again
And has a Father to answer to
[Nick Stanovick]
Like the teenage boy watching his Mother deteriorate
[Jasmine Combs & Nick Stanovick]
Like the night we found them with no breath left to say goodbye
This is what it means to have a ghost
[Jasmine Combs]
To be willingly haunted
[Nick Stanovick]
To miss someone so fiercely
[Jasmine Combs & Nick Stanovick]
You'll accept them even in demon form
When your parent dies
[Jasmine Combs]
The image of them as a corpse stitches itself to the back of your eyelids
[Nick Stanovick]
Turns every blink into an open casket
[Jasmine Combs & Nick Stanovick]
Every night into a funeral relived
[Nick Stanovick]
I've begun wishing for the night terrors
[Jasmine Combs]
In other dreams someone I love is always dying
[Jasmine Combs & Nick Stanovick]
But in these I dream the dead back to life
We understand the paradox
[Nick Stanovick]
How sadistic it is to yearn for the worst parts of them
[Jasmine Combs]
I feel safe with my father appearing in nightmares
Because what’s the alternative?
[Nick Stanovick]
There’s nothing peaceful about oblivion
[Jasmine Combs & Nick Stanovick]
No closure in forfeiting a parent to the nothingness of space
So we abandon rationality and cling to the only forms of them remaining
[Nick Stanovick]
Recollecting the gore of my mother is better than her vanishing completely
[Jasmine Combs]
I only remember my father’s yelling
But that’s better than his silence
[Jasmine Combs & Nick Stanovick]
And on the mornings after they come
[Nick Stanovick]
When the photo under my pillow was enough to summon her
[Jasmine Combs]
My mistakes are enough to conjure him from the grave
[Jasmine Combs & Nick Stanovick]
In the haze between dream and awake
When their familiar hands shake us from sleep
Like we aren’t the only ones in the room
[Nick Stanovick]
Like my parent isn’t dead
[Jasmine Combs]
Before I realize im an adult who answers to no one
[Jasmine Combs & Nick Stanovick]
When im not Fatherless/Motherless yet
[Nick Stanovick]
The day becomes a soothing promise
A reason to look to the heavens and give thanks
[Jasmine Combs]
Because today
Loneliness lives on the other side of the fence
[Jasmine Combs & Nick Stanovick]
And our families feel a little more full
So call us demented
Say they are the ones who Dream/Sleep so heavy gravestones shatter
[Nick Stanovick]
But tonight
I will again put the photo under my pillow
[Jasmine Combs]
And take comfort in my father chastising me from the next life
[Nick Stanovick]
Our fingers are still crossed for the hellish dreams
[Jasmine Combs & Nick Stanovick]
It’s the only dimension they exist in now
Our subconscious
The only life they have left
[Nayo Jones]
But your ghost, the ghost of you
It keeps me awake