Ghosts

The ghosts are heavy today.
Did you know they carry weight?
My passengers are crowded in close.

The small one wails and wails.
The tall, cold, skinny one hunches in his coat
and lurks, and watches.
The fat one trolls back and forth, the most oppressive
of the three, rampaging about and throwing bottles,
breaking glass on the floor of the train
as we roll and roll
through an autumn day.

Their voices become so loud, drowning out my own--
I've bid them to leave a thousand times
but they need me, a place to belong, a person to be--
they accompany me traveling,
we bicker like a strange family.

I guess I belong to their ephemeral ways--
of all who have left me,
they choose to stay--

so I carry them,
a comforting weight
on an autumn day.


~T. L. Shreffler