Poem:

"A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place." 
                                            -Rainer Maria Rilke

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place.
Kept preserved within it; the memories, the things
we'd rather forget, the truths and the lies
we tell ourselves for decades and milleniums.
A place is not supernatural, neither is a spirit. They
are both physical and mental hurts of the
shells of people left behind. They are not unlike pressed flower petals
in a musty tome found on your great uncle's bookshelf
in the middle of a winter, keeping safe the sunny technicolor days
he spent with your grand dad who passed away last spring.
For the thing that places and ghosts happen to have in common is
our need to get rid of them without letting go.