When you carry a ghost
long enough, you make
a home for him
in your marrow.
The grief becomes ritual.
The memory, an identity.
The pain, a companion
you trust more than peace.
Letting go of his pain,
of his ghost, of him,
feels like murdering
the only witness
to your miraculous becoming.
Anne Champion is the author of She Saints & Holy Profanities (Quarterly West, 2019), The Good Girl is Always a Ghost (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), Book of Levitations (Trembling Pillow Press, 2019), Reluctant Mistress (Gold Wake Press, 2013), The Dark Length Home (Noctuary Press, 2017), Hunted Carrion: Sonnets to a Stalker (Bowker, 2024), and This is a Story About Ghosts: A Memoir of Borderline Personality Disorder (Bowker, 2024). She was an Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a Best of the Net winner, a Douglas Preston Travel Grant recipient, and a Barbara Deming Memorial Grant recipient.
