my favourite ghost story starts in my bathroom. like all good ghost stories do. the floor is decorated with dead skin cells coated in caramel foam and i’m building a shrine for every poltergeist i've ever loved. you see blood on the mirror and scream but all i do is cough a little quieter. devotion feels cultish if you do it right. the orange lights shine brighter and every lie is laid out on soap strips. ghosts are women for men get stabbed and buried under boulders of unearned gold. haunting is for the desperate and his claws are red with satisfaction. i wash away the words and eat metaphors for breakfast. the walls are covered with prints yet my skin is stripped bare. possessed, and there's a ransom note in the centre and it's signed off with a heart. you tell me this is what love feels like. bloody mary arrives and she’s screaming (but so are you). the world doesn’t collapse and neither does she. we discuss death and made-up stories. loss has haunted me for ages but she came back. she keeps her lighter on the floor and the room is colder than christmas but i just can't reach. she tells me it will always be like this. the dips and aches i learnt in these walls will live here, without me. my favourite ghost story starts in my bathroom like all good ghost stories do but this time mary holds my hand and somehow even as all the lies wash away, the world stays still.