A child once called me the voice of the scorned.

He was small and wide-eyed,

irises glinting like the sun on a midmorning tide.

And for a reason I cannot describe,

I think that I lied, telling him I’d never mourned.

I’d mourned for my mother, I’d mourned for my friends.

I’d mourned for beginnings and not our ends.

Yet something had swayed me to tell this young man

that we existed in a space where no one was ‘better than’.

Who the better would be, though, I cannot say,

for I know that it means nothing to pray.

God cannot hear you, but the child knows not

that when he ends, there will be no more thoughts.

Ghost is a nickname for Thanatos de Kay. He’s an aspiring author, born and raised in Evanston, with a knack for putting his thoughts into words but not into speech. He’s interested in writing professionally one day, and his preferred genres are sci-fi, queer, or historical fiction, not necessarily in that order.