Tyrel Kessinger
To the Man from My Hometown
That Stood in A Lonely Field at Midnight
and Set Himself on Fire
I don’t believe in ghosts though perhaps I should. A ghost is after all nothing more than the absence of something. Think of all the possibilities. The left behind scent of my father’s aftershave is a ghost. My daughter’s old blanket she no longer gives a shape to is a ghost. I know at least five dogs that are nothing but ghosts in my small wake of history. Also, the youth of my past is a ghost, the future of my future a hypothetical ghost. Did you consider your own ghosts? Did they have their room to breathe? To fill their absences? Did they understand what they were giving up? What I mean by all this talk of ghosts is: c’mon and haunt me, baby.
About the writer:
Tyrel Kessinger is a stay-at-home dad of two wild animals. His work can be found at Gar-goyle, Triggerfish Critical Review, Straylight, and forthcoming from Washington Square Review, Red Rock Review, Atticus Review, and Typehouse. He’s currently in the MFA program at Spalding University and serves time as poetry editor for Great Lakes Review.
Image: Hochwacht by Hans Emmenegger (1866-1940). No medium specified. No size specified. 1904. Public domain.
