Whose tears?

I think the ghost has been crying.

My house is full of sadness.

Like walking along the bottom of an anguished ocean.
Grief making the water cold. Dead but undulating pain.
Sonic waves echoing the wailing. Hollow sound filling each room.
Shaking my lungs.

I can still breathe because
Spirit tears are not wet to the flesh though they are drenching my soul.
Real tears (my tears) answer the howling specter as I experience its sorrow,
Taking over my home.

I am in danger.
My air supply being cut off by my own foolishness—
Commiserating with the ghost that’s going to kill me
If I let it.
Scared of drowning on my tears, real and wet,
As they’re flowing through my mouth and down my throat.
Now gagging on water. Salt or spirit?

I don’t know whose tears I speak of at the moment.
I don’t know the worst thing that is happening.
The phantoms’ pain or the pain of being quarantined with the phantom.

I am desperate to stay alive.
The ghost is something . . . more than desperate.

One of us probably won’t make it out alive.
But the ghost is dead already.