The Time I Became a Ghost

What I loved? The hours saved—
white sheets go with pretty much any heel.
Grocery shopping stopped feeling like a chore.
If I didn’t look like myself, I could pretend
it wasn’t me, lugging all those cartons of milk
(it took liters and liters to maintain
that ghostly sheen). Sometimes I cheated,
let my sheets stand dead still
in the supermarket queue while I
hid in bed. No one suspected a thing.
But you kept peeking, as if to make sure
I was still in there, while I did the dishes
or stood by the window
watching the world through my holes.
I animatedly went booooo each time.
Until you stopped. There were nights
we laid back to back and I’m not sure
it made a difference if I
was under these sheets or not.
You snored loudly as I rolled
in all my leftover hours. There
were nights I wasn’t sure myself
whether I was there with you
or had already gone.

Lola Dekhuijzen is a poet from Amsterdam. Her work appears in Lighthouse, Abridged, Angel Exhaust and The Passionfruit Review. She will soon begin an MA in Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast. She loves climbing, matcha and ponds.