Last night we watched baseball,
after dinner,
a drink in our hands,
our mouths tired now,
from all the talking,
our minds tired now,
our souls, quiet, for now.
The grass on television
looks ultra green
and the white of the uniforms snap
like clean laundry.
This is spring coming,
I tell myself,
watching the fan on the floor whirl.
The window is open,
and the faint trace of smoke
and the slow steps of the old man
making his way up the street,
tell me again,
this is spring.
There is a homerun and we cheer.
We talk about going to see some games this summer,
about maybe my old father and my old mother coming too.
We talk about Coney Island,
and you squeeze my hand
as if to say,
yes we have survived this long winter.
Yes it is spring.
And I watch you watch the game
and think about how
it is almost your birthday
and I'm so glad we had this year together.
One more year together
And I turn back to the game and watch the pitcher
hurl the perfect final pitch
and paint the black like Picasso.
We chase ghosts even when they only come
in the form of metal signs bolted to poles
in downtown LA.
We drive around and around, changing lanes,
trying to find a place to park
so that you can run out and take a picture
of John Fante Square,
in the last vestiges of Bunker Hill.
We chase ghosts, even when they are only
stones in the ground.
Our hands placed upon the grave,
the marker that said, there once was a man
who didn't try,
who lived a life,
who wrote a life,
and we think
because we read his words that we
knew him too or hope we did
or think we do or hope we have
the kind of life that is really lived.
We chase ghosts,
slowing down on the sidewalk
to pass houses everyone else passes
every day without notice.
Old houses, stone houses, wood houses,
Stained with wind and dirt and new paint.
Hung with ugly decorations now.
They are our churches.
They held the lives of these people,
these people we think we knew,
or we hope we might have known
if fate had been a little less cruel with her timing.
We chase ghosts and take pictures,
of places they have just left,
spaces they once occupied,
when all they left behind are the ideas,
the words, the work.
No one likes these pictures,
"What is with all the houses?
What is with all the graves?"
They ask but they don't understand.
Ghost chasing his hard work.
These people are real to me, you see,
more real than the people around me,
more real than people I have known
my whole life,
more real than the beggars and the millionaires
and the cops and the old ladies that
build this city.
These people, these dead people,
who still talk to me, who feel as though
they just stepped away for another six pack at the store
and will be back if you just wait, for a moment
on the couch on their front porch,
these people, you see,
they are my only real friends.
When I spotted the fly on my ham and cheese sandwich,
it already had one foot in the mustard.
He or she, I'm not sure,
still I jumped and waved it away.
Then when I picked up my glass,
my mouth still forming the words,
and lifted the glass to my lips,
there it was,
floating and dead,
in all that pale lemonade.
I scooped it out with a spoon,
dumped the dead fly down the sink.
and then poured the rest of the lemonade after it.
What? you asked,
Nothing. I said.
Just another thing.
Just another thing that can ruin a meal.
I stand at the sink
and listen to myself breathe,
a whistle sound, faint but there,
trailing the inhale
and trailing the exhale.
Trailing again.
I look down at my unpainted toes,
and they stare back up at me, like ten strange eyes.
For a moment, I wonder who they belong to.
They seem too far away to be my own feet
and just like that everything starts to come undone.
It will take awhile. It won't fully happen until much later that night.
But this is where it began.
When it ends,
if
it ends,
I will remember that.
Ally Malinenko has been fortunate to have her poems and stories published both online and in print. Her second book of poems, titled Crashing to Earth, is forthcoming from Tainted Coffee Press. Ally currently lives in the part of Brooklyn the tour buses don't come to.