I Was Alone in the Haunted House, Naked, Which You Usually Don’t See in Movies, and This Poem is for Bhanu Kapil and Jackie Wang and — by Ron Riekki

I was nonexistent and the boys and girls knew about my PTSD and it made me asexual and polka-dotted and I’m delighted and human and immense and I am the ending of a fake novel and I’m a ghost and the doors are closed and I’m listening to Alfred Hitchcock Presents Ghost Stories for Young People and the faucet is dripping and no one will survive the haunted pirate curse or the housing shortage or the tinnitus and my PTSD has arrived from overseas and I leap and days are spent touring and the house is a minister and I was delighted, much too delighted, strange delighted, and my PTSD is haunted and I’m naked, waiting, notifying my wife, except I don’t have a wife or a house or a servant or a candle, and there is waiting and the bed is nice and the waitress told me that “boba is the opposite of Thai tea” and I wondered if it’s really the opposite so I said thank you to the end of the world and the knocks are on my head and the prisons are prisons and I run and horror is Florida and I worked in a prison in Florida and my PTSD is a street door and I was alone in the haunted house and the prisons were like a darkness and my PTSD was not human and I order whatever the waitress tells me to order and they always have me order the hottest thing on the menu and don’t bring me any more water and fear is strategic and the prisons are horror and pride and courage and horror and they threw urine in my face in the prison and the shock was phenomenological and slow and I followed you and the room was breathing darkness and the climax depends on the weather, but I found the strength to yell, Light!