BABY, LET'S BE GHOSTS
For Jiun
Baby, I know why you had to go and haunt your home again. People got too comfortable with
you being gone. They started putting up new photos, moving the furniture, placing bluebells in
the waiting mouths of the dirt—don’t they know all that green ringing is your requiem? Don’t
they know those yellow windows still have your name etched on ‘em?
Baby, scream in the grass ocean for me. Oh baby, I hope you go swimming. I hope you’re out
there in the weeds and painting the faint glow of the Huddle House sign, the technicolor haloed-
mess of cathedrals and restaurants and overnight pit stops. Round midnight, I hope you're out
dancing with the strange wild things in the woods.
It’s true, baby, you know better than most what it means to live where the guns are loud and beat
your body down. But baby, on the Fourth of July, you’re the fireworks without the bad blast of
all that patriotism. Oh baby, you’re the rifts in the night sky where the light and noise tumble out.
And still, baby, still. Still the honeysuckle tastes sweet. Still you eat well and still your hair
grows black, glossed, long. You go downtown in your plaid second-hand dress and you’re five
kinds of joyous—you’re the fire pit, the clay and granite, you’re the prairie and the coin-cool
spring, and nobody can dig that out of you.
Baby, I’m a big ‘ol bass in a muddy pond, my lips scarred over by run-ins with fishermen. I
spent years trying to kick my fish hook habit, but baby, these days I want that barb-tailed siren
all over again. Here’s the lure, and baby, maybe this time I’ll let the line go taut. This time, I’ll
give up my fins. This time, I’ll haunt.
you being gone. They started putting up new photos, moving the furniture, placing bluebells in
the waiting mouths of the dirt—don’t they know all that green ringing is your requiem? Don’t
they know those yellow windows still have your name etched on ‘em?
Baby, scream in the grass ocean for me. Oh baby, I hope you go swimming. I hope you’re out
there in the weeds and painting the faint glow of the Huddle House sign, the technicolor haloed-
mess of cathedrals and restaurants and overnight pit stops. Round midnight, I hope you're out
dancing with the strange wild things in the woods.
It’s true, baby, you know better than most what it means to live where the guns are loud and beat
your body down. But baby, on the Fourth of July, you’re the fireworks without the bad blast of
all that patriotism. Oh baby, you’re the rifts in the night sky where the light and noise tumble out.
And still, baby, still. Still the honeysuckle tastes sweet. Still you eat well and still your hair
grows black, glossed, long. You go downtown in your plaid second-hand dress and you’re five
kinds of joyous—you’re the fire pit, the clay and granite, you’re the prairie and the coin-cool
spring, and nobody can dig that out of you.
Baby, I’m a big ‘ol bass in a muddy pond, my lips scarred over by run-ins with fishermen. I
spent years trying to kick my fish hook habit, but baby, these days I want that barb-tailed siren
all over again. Here’s the lure, and baby, maybe this time I’ll let the line go taut. This time, I’ll
give up my fins. This time, I’ll haunt.
Kim Ramos is a queer Filipina writer from Missouri. They are looking forward to one day being a ghost. In the meantime, they'll pick flowers and eat good food.