Published in Haunts 
Salty x Food Court
November 2019

Spring Ghosts





I walk up the hill.
Dead slugs lie squashed across the footpath.
The air is becoming warm.










He heats a supermarket pizza in the oven;
The kind with pink ham and a thick cardboard base.

He adds a layer of sliced green jalapeños
from a glass jar in the fridge.

Once heated he cuts the pizza with a large knife
on the cream marble kitchen bench.










On our second to last night together
she brings out a layer of frozen wedding cake
from the depths of her freezer.

We take turns singeing the icing
with a small blow torch.
Burnt sugar vapour floats around us.

She gets out a large silver knife 
and hacks into the cake.
Shards of pale icing petals fling outwards;
scattering around the deck.

The next morning I find small
pieces of white icing on the couch.

She throws the cake into the ocean.
It drops into the swell far below;
blue ripples and waves swirling around.









White spring bulbs drape themselves through the grass
and peach centered daffodils bloom among weeds.

It is quiet in the park;
icy drops of rain caught in the netting of silvery branches.

The past hangs around with the same quality
as the substance that leaks from below cars:

appearing on wet days
as milky rainbows
melting through the concrete.










Four months after moving in
she finds a key
lying in the centre of her wardrobe floor.











White spring flowers cascade down the hill.