Ghosts

It’s funny the way the ghosts
In an old house
Will use the same sounds
The house itself would make
If they weren’t there

Wet leaves scratching on a windowpane
Wind moaning and sighing in the eves
The draughts creaking and slamming the door
At the top of the stairs

It’s only their footsteps that give them away
As they creep along the flexible wooden floorboards
But perhaps that too is only the house settling
Shifting imperceptibly in the cooling night air

How funny I must appear
To that being I’ve been trained to imagine
Who watches my behavior with
Suspicious moral gaze

As I call out: “Who are you!
What do you want?”
In the dampening darkness

“What strange questions to ask of one’s self!”
He must be thinking
But what’s truly unnerving
Is that that voice too is really only me
Only me
This dwelling, my uncanny doppelganger
Rising up to ape me in my solitude
As I am the only one here.