The sweet lady who bought my house
and saves my unforwarded mail texts me:

Did anything strange ever happen when you lived here? 
Her dogs look up and bark at nothing.
A book has flown off of a shelf.
She says she doesn’t feel safe

in the home where I rebuilt myself.
I restored the house, over a century old,
sorely abused and auctioned off, but
nothing weird ever happened to me there,

not even after midnight, 
not even when I asked for it! 
begging my late husband so many nights to visit 
because he appeared only in dreams–

        a Cheerios box for a chest
        with a slit from top to bottom
        that he opened like a vest to reveal 
        a nest of straw 

        or shuffling along the farm’s gravel road
        in his Carhartt coveralls, using a shovel like a walking stick
        I told him he needed to go lie down
        his skin was the color of an old celery stalk

        only once did he show up looking normal
        for dinner at the big house on the farm, 
        kiss me, and say, I saved you a seat

        most often he showed up with a carload of buddies
        and dumped me for someone else,
        left me stranded in unfamiliar cities–

        the sole way my brain could process severed love.

Gosh, I’m so sorry, I reply. Nothing like that ever happened to me!
Later, I show the texts to my daughter
who reminds me when she spent the night and saw
a man’s shadow walk through the kitchen into a wall.

Any ghost must have felt
no point in bothering me.