How to Feed a Hungry Ghost

The ghost always arrives after dark.

It does not knock,

does not wait.

It slides through the cracks of the window,

through the marrow of my bones,

through the thin places in thought

where silence pools.

It is not a violent guest.

It carries no chains,

makes no threats.

But its hunger is heavier than any weapon.

I feel it before I see it—

a cold swell pressing against the air,

an ache that spreads into the ribs.

I set the table though I know it will not be enough.

A bowl, an empty plate,

a spoon that remembers the warmth of another hand.

The ghost settles across from me,

though the chair stays untouched.

The air grows denser,

as if the room itself has been inhaled.

What do you feed something

that cannot chew bread,

cannot drink water,

cannot taste the ripe sweetness of fruit?

I try anyway.

I serve it silence,

cut into slices.

I pour absence into cups

until the table is drenched.

But grief eats differently.

It swallows shadows whole.

It chews on the echo of voices,

on conversations interrupted mid-sentence,

on lullabies hummed only once.

It drinks from glasses left half-full,

where lip marks fade but never disappear.

It gorges on the small relics of daily life:

unanswered letters,

wrinkled sheets on an empty bed,

the indentation of a body no longer there.

Desire eats the same way.

It gnaws at what never was,

licks the bone of possibility,

feasts on the flavor of what-if.

It devours promises spoken in low light,

plans whispered like seeds in the dark.

Sometimes it confuses me for food,

pressing its mouth against my chest,

pulling at my pulse,

leaving me hollowed and trembling.

The ghost asks for things I cannot give:

the warmth of hands I cannot resurrect,

the timbre of a laugh carried away by years,

the taste of mornings when the world was whole.

It wants the impossible feast—

what has been lost,

what was never mine,

what the body remembers

but the world denies.

So I improvise.

I serve it sighs baked into bread.

I set down photographs like salted meat,

cured with time, brittle at the edges.

I boil silence until it thickens into memory,

until it smells faintly of regret.

I place my dreams, still raw,

onto porcelain plates.

The ghost leans forward and devours everything.

Still, it is not satisfied.

To feed a hungry ghost

is to starve yourself carefully.

It is to let longing bite

the edges of your sleep.

It is to wake with your heartbeat

shivering like a spoon in an empty cup.

It is to cut your own heart into pieces,

to serve it warm,

to watch it vanish into a mouth

that never closes.

And yet I keep feeding it.

Because hunger has its own gravity.

Because longing is its own ritual.

Because some ghosts do not leave

when they are full—

they leave only

when you stop offering.

Even then,

their absence eats too.

The silence they leave behind

is its own devouring.

It chews through walls,

gnaws at the floorboards,

drinks the air until the rooms are hollow.

So I choose the haunting I know.

Better the ghost at the table,

bending the air with its hunger,

than the emptiness that comes

when it no longer arrives.

And so I prepare each night:

a table for two,

a plate for me,

a plate for the absence across from me.

I wait for the ghost to sit,

though it never does.

I offer it everything

I have left to give:

my silence, my memory,

the weight of my breath,

the ache of my longing.

And when it finally leans in,

I feel both terror and relief.

Because I know—

I am feeding it,

but it is also feeding me.