If the ghosts hadn’t fallen

Before we’d met

Would they have taken us

Further from ourselves?

Had they not been slain

Would we find ourselves

Crushed and broken

Beneath invisible claims?

Would we have found

The truth of who we are

Had we not sliced them

Gut to throat with honesty

And accountability?

I think we are who we are

Because our ghosts

No longer have darkness

To hide themselves

We are stronger in truth

All of us stronger

Without these ghosts