Ghosts

I saw a ghost this morning.
It did not stay for long.
It looked a little like Rufus
sitting where he belonged.

Perhaps a ghost is only
a memory passing through,
but Rufus opened up a door,
and Christian came through too.

I saw the boy who found the cat,
the rooms in which they grew,
and all the ordinary days
we never thought we’d lose.

It’s strange how one small moment
can make a life appear,
with everything you thought you knew
and everything you feared.

They told us life had certain rules.
Be good. Be brave. Be true.
Work hard, believe, and carry on,
and life will care for you.

But life, I learned, is not a thing
that promises to care.
Sometimes you reach for what is right
and find it isn’t there.

They told us work would make us free
and everyone could choose.
But choosing is a different thing
when hunger makes the rules.

We trade the hours of our lives
for enough to make it through,
then rise again the following day
and do what we must do.

And even love keeps ledgers now
of what we give and take,
as though a heart were only worth
the comforts it can make.

We measure touch and tenderness,
we bargain to belong,
then wonder why the nights feel cold
and why the days feel long.

We work so we can someday rest,
saving what we may,
until we’re old and someone comes
to take it all away.

They’ll put us somewhere clean and still
when all our strength is gone,
or work us to our final breath,
then quietly hire on.

“Just wait,” they say. “There’s Heaven.
All will be settled there.”
But I have watched too many promises
vanish into air.

They tell me justice waits beyond
and everyone must pay.
But those who wound a million hearts
may die in peace one day.

No debt returned. No balance made.
No answer for the cost.
The wounded keep what happened.
The guilty simply get lost.

So tell me what it all was for.
Tell me what I missed.
I know that there were precious days
and people I have kissed.

There were cats in favorite chairs,
a child’s delighted face,
and times the space between two lives
became a sacred place.

And I shall miss them fiercely
when I, too, disappear.

But do not tell me suffering
was why they mattered here.

Do not tell me pain was needed.
Do not call the cruelty grace.
Do not promise me another world
to justify this place.

There was beauty.
There was love.
There were moments worth the fight.

But God damn it,
it could have been better.

It could have been made right.

—Bryan Brouwer