Visits

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Shakespeare arrives wearing a neck ruffle shaped like a broken satellite dish. He stands in my kitchen, pokes at the microwave as if it might soliloquize. “This box hums like Hamlet’s ghost,” he says. “And wherefore does your food spin like stars?” He suspects the blender is a witch, calls my laptop a false oracle, and tries to duel my reflection on Zoom. I tell him he’s a little late for drama. He replies, “I never left.” Byron slinks in, a velvet coat soaked in moonlight, a smirk that smells faintly of absinthe. He collapses on my futon calls it a chaise. He demands wine. I offer seltzer. He weeps. He scrawls a lament on dusty windowpane something about despair and brunch. The cat adores him. They vanish into the night, leaving behind a trail of sandalwood incense and half a stanza about meaningless beauty and traffic. Keats arrives next. He speaks softly, as if words are borrowed light. He touches my phone like a wounded bird. He opens my fridge and writes an ode to the icemaker's groan. He smells my vape. “This is what dying tastes like,” he says. I nod. We sit in silence. He listens to my playlist. “ There is longing here,” he whispers, “ but it plays another's memory.” Then Gibran enters, robed in metaphors and sea foam. He holds my coffee mug as if it contains the universe's pain. “You have mistaken distraction for doubt,” he tells me. “You are not lonely. You are unfolding.” He blesses my cracked ceiling and forgives my search history. I don’t ask for this, but I feel forgiven anyway. Finally, Dickinson emerges from between the couch cushions like a syllable nearly missed. She regards me as one might a quiet apocalypse. “There is thunder in you,” she says, “but it is folded like laundry.” She hands me a jar of buttons. “I trust you’ll know when to sew.” They stay just long enough. Shakespeare builds a pillow fort and stages a tragedy inside it. Byron flirts with my echo. Keats finds a flower in the drain and names it Endurance. Gibran writes scripture on a receipt. Dickinson disappears without opening the door. When they leave, they leave nothing behind except existential glitter and the paranoia of having been seen by ghosts who invented seeing.