The Ghost

She was gone and I asked around if anyone had seen her. Tall, dark hair, blue dress, at least I thought it was blue, it might have been green, or purple, or another color entirely. Fair skin, like sunlight, and everyone said no. I was dealing with an Irish ghost. I walked up to people I'd never spoken to and said please, please, you must have seen this girl, she was the only girl I saw. And one by one each answered no, asked me how much I'd had to drink, wondered how I was getting home. But what was there? Busted pipes and a mattress on the floor, there was nothing at home for me.

The dress went black, it inverted with her skin, she became a negative. What had we talked about, let's see, let's see: politics, weather, motorcycles, second grade teachers. Nothing that told me why she was there, who she knew, who she was. Were there people out in the world, I thought, that wondered this of me? Alien skin sketched in their minds, something they only see when staring at a blank wall? Am I somebody's ghost?

Everyone left, everyone left but I stayed. Seated on a broken couch, resting my arm on its broken side, sinking into flaking pleather. It sucked the energy from the room and me along with it. Nobody said goodbye, nobody thought to look. And it seemed to me a haunted house, a place filled with ghosts, and that maybe it was I, and I alone, who did not belong.