Okay now tell me what you know. Nothing worked until the invisible fence and now that works. The choke went the way of mud. I followed across the field watching the back of you between looking for parasites coming up my legs. I hope I get a tick so I have something to talk about. Here, I've protected you from something. The warm plants all around us keep reaching for us, you mostly. In the distance a factory of voices quietly constructing sugar for one another. Some days I think I'm going to throw up with how little I know. The way I keep watching the same space in the room makes me think there might be something wrong. Though I don't feel any different. I think if you remodel a house—new vanities, paint, maybe take out a wall, add a quiet room—you can kill any ghost that makes me get up in the middle of the night, and ask, politely, if I need to leave. The wrappers on the coffee table have some chocolate left in the creases. I don't need a flashlight. I am a flashlight.
Christopher Citro is the author of The Maintenance of the Shimmy-Shammy (Steel Toe Books) and a recipient of a 2018 Pushcart Prize. His poems appear in Ploughshares, Best New Poets, The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review Blog, and Crazyhorse. He lives in Syracuse, New York.
Dustin Nightingale is the author of Ghost Woodpecker, a chapbook forthcoming from BatCat Press. His poetry has been or will be published in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, new ohio review, Cimarron Review, Portland Review, and decomP. He lives in Hartford, Connecticut.