Ghost

I just can’t sleep anymore. So I put my hands
deep in craft hoping my brain will follow suit.
That’s when the atmosphere shifts. Cools.

And you sneak in to ruin my poem, cup your hands
around it. Add a touch, unnecessary. I watch my work
topple. Hope it wasn’t a masterpiece I hear you

whisper somewhere. In my head, it’s easy to picture
you throwing things across my bedroom:
your dresses I’ve already hemmed, the porcelain

owls you sent by mail, your mother’s wedding ring;
or the simple act of knocking your own picture
off the wall. I half wish for Whoopi Goldberg

to knock on my door. Instead I say to no one: I think
about you every minute, it’s like I can still feel you.

A.k.Padovich received her M.F.A. in poetry from George Mason University in May 2015, where she was an Honors Awardee, Lannan Fellow, and co-Editor-in-Chief and Lead Poetry Editor for So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Literature and Art. In the past she has taught an introductory Literature course on death, crisis, and zombies at the college level, life skills in a Special Education classroom, and the English language abroad in the Russian Federation. Her poetry has been featured in Beltway Poetry Quarterly’s special prose poem issue amongst others. This transplant-Seattlelite now calls the open road her home.