Illustration by Anderson Lee
You my wayward ghost,
ghost rider
joyriding all summer
appear at my stoop,
knocking on my chest.
You seek cash
and a couch to crash
You seek life force
take it straight
out of marrow,
claws like a catheter.
I could pretend –
stuff cloth in the cracks
smiling through your terror as
you chase away lovers.
My work collects dust
on the kitchen table
the clock clacking
towards dead – lines carved
like the tapping
of a chisel on stone.
But sheathe your teeth,
for you do not need
to rob a house that you own
or to cut your way back
into the room you have slept in since sixteen.
You are here, and every September
we meet the same way.
Next year, can we welcome you,
You my lost traveller,
say, “Eat, you are home now,”
You, the longer nights to my longer days
My other season.
Sandra Ngo is the daughter of Vietnamese boat people. She has recently returned home to Calgary to be close to her parents and 30 first cousins. She holds a Master’s degree in Economics, which is poetry but with numbers. Her work has appeared in The Hungry Zine and The Woman Inc.