A Name for a Ghost

The passport form is waiting for a middle initial,

a bridge between the person and the state.

I write the 'E' in a hand too official,

carrying a man I never met as my weight.

They picked it for a brother who died at twenty

from a cough that the medicine couldn't quite reach.

A spare name, when the family had plenty,

now a lesson that nobody wanted to teach.

The blue ink bleeds into the thin white leaf,

a dark stain spreading like a bruise on the page.

I’m just the vessel for someone else’s grief,

a hand-me-down ghost coming of age.