A ghost

          —After a drawing by Eleanor Callanan, age 4

Ooooo, is what I’m saying.
Ooooo, and I say it so hard that my sounds
break their floating purple speech balloon. 
When I say ooooo, you had better believe

I mean it.

I glow golden, pure auric aura, 
aurora eyes green like copper flame, atomic
excitation. They are filled with light
and they want to burst
out of my head. 

I have taught myself to look
forward and backward
at the same time. 

I do it by wrenching myself 
’round, wringing myself out 
like a washcloth. I 
am weightless
and I have no spine, so it isn’t
very difficult.

Sometimes I feel as though
my body just barely suffers
my mind, my thoughts
oppressive as pollen clouds,
mugwort and ragweed rampant
and fractious. Lung-plugging,
spirit-stifling.

Ooooo, I say. Ooooo.

Sometimes I wonder if my mind 
will abandon my body altogether, rise 
up out of me, spectral, phosphorescent,
lifting luminous from the muck 
and decay of this sullen world. 

Sometimes I remember:
it already has.