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Malaika King Albrecht

 

 

 

 

How to Make a Ghost                              

 

 

You can’t build a ghost from memories,

photographs, or a last conversation.

 

You can’t pull one from a wine stain

on a wedding dress or patch one

together from your sorrow rags.

 

Ghosts create themselves from

our breathing when we sleep,

weave slim bodies from dream murmuring.

 

From our hair they thread clothes

and stitch their mouths into the o’s

of surprise or horror or grief.

This is why the dead want us

to sleep so soundly.                         

 

 

 

 

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