I am a haunted house. There are ghosts in the living room of my stomach and ghouls in the
cabinets and everyone is too scared to go into the basement between my thighs. They have heard
the stories about how no one ever comes back from there the same, how they are missing fingers
and tongues and never had invitations. They have heard how someone else built this home I live
in, like I have any right to this spectral body, like I have earned my demons, like I deserve to have
a cemetery for a foundation. And if I am a haunted house then where do I go the rest of the year
when I am out of season? What is the refuge for a breaking thing? If I am a haunted house then
these bones must be an attic where sheet covered furniture brushes up against you like a black
cat. My head must be the framework that shakes in the windblown through the trees of my hair.
And if I am a haunted house why am I so lonely? Why does no one ever visit? Am I too trauma
for your holiday tour? My skeleton does not glow in the dark or dance when you pull a string but
it does hold me up and my skin does not rot off in chunks but it does keep my organs in and my
eyes do not dangle from threads but they do see the way you look at me during the sexual assault
prevention assembly and if I am a haunted house, was I once just a house? Will there be an
exorcism without a demolition? Can I ever be rid of the screaming?