My Bed Shakes & I Assume the Ghosts Are Finally Getting Me

But it’s just an earthquake in Indiana. I love this story

because of you. We met in high school summer gym

where we turned jeans into floatation devices and tallied

bowling scores by hand. We got close in AP English

when we admitted that we read Jane Eyre in one evening,

how we loved the teacher’s tape recording of Macbeth

because we really didn’t understand what was supposed

to be funny. Back then, we wanted to be rappers or doctors,

and now philanthropic EDM DJs in Vegas. We love to chug

coffee past 11 p.m. so we can shit a final time before

a night of dancing and waddling through snow in heels

we bought after we broke up with our boyfriends.

The older we get, we are always late. Like to the Odesza concert

you won radio tickets to, how we shivered underneath

fleece blankets covered in dog hair, the outfits we picked out

months before never seen in our blurry pictures. I am writing all this

to get to what I really want to say—you are the most faithful person

I know. You believe in prayer because you believe in ghosts,

in vengeful spirits because you’ve seen them. Once, you asked

if I thought you were silly for being so superstitious

and I said no—I pray when I am scared, the only time I take

in   Jesus’s name I  pray seriously. Me trusting my mouth and you,

for good measure, hanging a picture of   Jesus above the bed,

a crucifix, and a Bible on your nightstand even though

we don’t read it anymore. Here, I try to conjure images

or metaphors of our selves but I can only remember

what we say to each other—isn’t it funny how every Asian girl we know

is engaged or about to be engaged to a white boy or

don’t trust white moms from Carmel because they voted

for Trump or we’d rather them smile at us while keeping their hate

to themselves or isn’t it funny we don’t go out anymore or this is better

or after midnight or our mothers this our mothers that or—