Ghost

I left my name

somewhere beneath the thunder

of a foreign sky.

What came home

wore my face,

answered to my voice,

kissed familiar lips

but it was only

the ghost of a man.

The fire never died.

It only learned

to burn where no one sees.

Blood has a memory.

It stains more than hands.

It settles into the cracks of the soul,

waiting for silence

to speak its name.

I have watched bullets

rip daylight from a man's chest,

watched breath flee

like frightened birds,

watched mothers become prayers

before they ever knew

their sons were gone.

The earth opened its mouth

and swallowed boys

who still carried photographs

of home.

Smoke climbed into heaven.

The living learned

to envy the dead.

Now every door that slams

becomes incoming fire.

Every backfire

is another body falling.

Every night

is a country

I cannot escape.

People ask

whether the war is over.

They do not understand.

Wars do not always end

with treaties.

Some are signed

in scar tissue.

Some are written

behind the eyes.

Some march forever

through the chambers

of a single heart.

I search mirrors

for the man

who left.

He never answers.

Only a stranger

with exhausted eyes,

shoulders bent beneath invisible graves,

and hands

that still remember

the weight

of another man's final breath.

If there is a haunting,

it is not the dead

who follow me.

It is the man

I used to be.

And I

I have become

his ghost.

I think the final lines carry the deepest weight:

If there is a haunting,

it is not the dead who follow me.

It is the man

I used to be.

And I

I have become

his ghost.