Ghost Story

By Nadia Vires

I still order your favorite coffee when my fingers are blue,
And I still recommend your favorite movie to people who are lonely on a Friday night.
But I don’t dream about you anymore.
My days are still sprinkled with tiny pieces of you and all the memories we won’t make.
But my nights are mine again.
I think of you often, but I never see your face in my dreams, and that feels like healing.


Navigating our way through relationships in all forms can be thrilling and gratifying or heartbreaking and challenging, and can prompt many emotions to rise to the surface.

In a collection of poems divided into four sections, Nadia Vires lyrically tells a story of heartbreak, grief, love, and hope. As she leads others through the unique phases of love and encourages self-reflection on the process of falling in and out of love, Nadia’s poems explore the experiences of being left, abandoned, cherished, and hopeful as well as death, depression, sexuality, and femininity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: May 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781665740494

Nadia Vires

Nadia Vires earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and is currently a freelance writer. She was raised in Pensacola, Florida, and is passionate about capturing what it means to be human through her writing, artwork, and poetry. Ghost Story is her first book of poems.

Book preview

TO THOSE

WHO LEFT

1

DROUGHT

I think of you when it rains in Virginia.

Something about thunder roaring across the Blue Ridge Mountains makes me think of the anger in your voice when I told you I couldn’t love you anymore.

Something about lightning tearing through trees much older than me makes me think of the fragility reflected in your eyes.

Something about water flooding the streets makes me think of the way you mourned the love story I stopped writing long before you were finished reading.

The last time it rained in Virginia, I stood in a field I have laughed countless times in.

I thought of how inconvenient rain is for those going somewhere new,

Of how devastating rain is for those who are not ready to leave,

Of how life-giving rain is for those waiting for promised beginnings.

Of you,

Of you,

As the rain consumed my senses,

I thought of only you.

2

I STARTED WRITING

LOVE POEMS AGAIN

I should have expected our end to be as instantaneous and as catastrophic as our beginning.

This whirlwind love carried us for weeks, but it felt like years.

We selfishly compressed a lifetime into a month, so it only makes sense that the end stole the air from my lungs.

Our love gave me the same kind of adrenaline rush I imagine people who steal expensive cars feel,

Racing down highways on borrowed time until they mold a car that never belonged to them around a tree on an interstate, now marked only with a white cross.

But we won’t even get a white cross, because our love was in its infancy, and what kind of marking do you give a life not yet lived?

My greatest works are riddled with tears and odes to a pain felt inside the hidden parts of a person’s chest.

But I started writing love poems again after I met you.

Perhaps this is a test from a being above to see if my gift could be used in the daylight and not simply at the loneliest time of night.

Maybe I didn’t fail the test per se.

Maybe I just finally realized what kind of art my mind was made to craft.

Perhaps some people are suited for love poems melted with sugar and honey,

And perhaps I am far more suited for the kind of haikus that leave people shaking as they remember a time when they felt equally betrayed by both the person who broke their heart and themselves for handing it to them.

3

THE CIGARETTES ARE

ALL THAT’S LEFT

I never craved nicotine until you stopped kissing my lips.

Now the shakes that keep me curled around myself remind me of the countless cigarettes I watched you smoke.

You used to smoke like you were running out of time.

You used to smoke like you needed to move on to whatever came after we lay tangled together on a Monday morning.

I miss the way the gray clouds curled around your glasses and tucked themselves inside your curls.

I still wonder what they were looking for inside your mind and if they’ll ever share what they found.

I miss the way your fingers left trails of ash on pillows we picked out together.

I still wonder if the pillows will feel your touch again before my cheek will.

I miss the sound of your steady breath inhaling the certainty that came with each light.

I still wonder if you saw life in us and you ran because of your learned loyalty to death.

I have lit only one cigarette since you left, and a tear extinguished the flame long before I tasted the freedom you seemed to taste.

I now wonder if you chain-smoke with her like you did with me,

Or if you’ve quit because now she’s the only fix you need.

4

BUTTERFLIES

I crouched in front of my toilet, pressing my fingernails against the porcelain.

I was hoping to exorcise the last reminder of you from me.

I had been unable to remove your voice from my mind, but I knew the butterflies had to leave my body.

My knees began to bruise as I bowed to the power you