Existential Spittle

The ghost-y thing
appears and peers
at me as if to see
what I will make of it.
Or more complacently,
it may not care. Maybe
all it wants to be is there.

And there – and here –
it is. Squirming round
irrelevant rug fragments
like a bit of fear left
over from a family repast:
an Easter dinner, maybe:
something following a fast.

Perhaps it wonders where
Lent went. I got a glimpse
today of where I used
to live when I was little.
A picture of the living room
my mother would,
for Easter, have addressed

with daffodils. I taste
an unaccountable remorse:
a bit of existential spittle.
Perhaps the squiggle
in the carpet fragments
came to grant me
an acquittal.

.