Napo 28

I ignored today's napo writing prompt because something's been on my mind lately. A few weeks ago, B was driving across the country alone, and he came home with the wildest of ghost stories. I'm not one to believe ghost stories; in fact, they don't scare me in the slightest because I don't believe in ghosts, demons, or anything of the sort. I just firmly don't and I've always been that way. This story, though, was scary, but for a different reason.
I want to develop this poem a little more -- interweave more of the theme of the fear of loneliness into the poem throughout to make the ending punch more. I like this idea, so I'll come back to this later and hopefully develop it into a poem.

Ghost Story

My husband tells me a ghost story

Over breakfast: last night, he says,

He drove through the thickest fog

In the deadest part of Texas.

Even the gold from his headlights

wasn’t enough to illuminate

the winding road before him.

No town for twenty miles east.

No town for thirty miles west.

He sailed through brushland

Dreaming of coming home

Joining me here in the warmth

Of our bed, listening to the rhythm

Of my breath, the cat’s purr, the hums

Of life. 2am. The darkest hour.

A two-lane road. No shoulder.

His side of the bed, empty,

Cold as a corpse.

An infinity of gray darkness

On every horizon. He swallowed

The fear in his throat, another swig

Of flat red bull. He white-knuckled

the steering wheel. In the darkness,

On the road, the mind begins to wander

To the darkest thoughts, to loneliness.

Mine does too, I say and take a sip of coffee.

And loneliness can make a man go mad.

And for a moment I imagine sitting here,

At the kitchen table, across me, an empty chair

Filled only with the morning sun.

The fog broke for just a moment,

Somewhere in the middle of this nowhere.

A moment of clarity, of sky so dark

It swallows any man. And there,

On the roadside, a man so old

He bends to the earth

Clutches a suitcase,

Journeys into the abyss.

My husband tells me this.

I saw him. I swear. He says.

I shake my head in disbelief.

Your imagination.

But he insists, tells me

He thought of pulling over

On the roadside, and would

Had it not been for the fog.

He shutters. He was either real

Or a ghost, which my husband

Knows I don’t believe in.

And as I take another sip of coffee,

My mind wanders out to the brushland,

the old man, wandering alone now

in the light of day, maybe he reached

his destination, whether the next town

or the next life. A cold chill travels

up my spine as I consider what fills me

with more fear: the ghost roaming

the Texas countryside, or

the thought that the world

We live in would turn out its lights

While a man so old wandered

Through the fog, so lost and so alone.