At night her naked ghost
haunts my flat
moving through the dark
pale and long
her breasts sometimes
discreetly shadowed
sometimes luminous
small high globes
like moons
I shiver under blankets
She doesn’t feel the cold
Ghosts don’t
they merely cause it
or so I’m told
by unreliable sources
and anyway
perhaps it’s still summer where she is
Perhaps a summer ghost
superimposed on winter
will never know the difference
I peer outside
The stars terrorize the sky
I can almost see the air
slowing down to a stop
I dream of snow but when I go to look
it’s a bugs’ graveyard
In powdery piles
they’ve turned moon white
I wake up and the light’s all wrong
The glare behind the curtain
tells me snow has really fallen
It crunches like beetles
like a billion shiny backs

-Robert Warrington