love letters to ghosts

somewhere else, you are looking over my shoulder
and critiquing my syntax,
and later on, after the movie,
when your hand is on my hand,
i look surreptitiously over at you,
and realise how precious this is,
and resolve to memorise every second of it
so that i would have some totem, some
kind of touchstone, some kind of hope
of remembering you when you are gone,
and then you say something funny, like
'my eyes are up here, buster,'
and i respond with something clever,
and you giggle,
and the moment passes, and i
forget about the alternate reality
of a me who sits at a desk, imagining you
beside me, and me turning to face you,
telling you that somewhere else
is a me who isn't beside you
and how i am so glad
i'm not him