For almost a year I had a beard.

Weeks after shaving

I feel the beard

A ghost

5 o’clock shadow

Haunting my face

Knocking at the door of my skin

Wanting to come back

Come back and live and be again

But for now

It haunts my face

Like any limb

Like any part of us

Grown and gone

But there

Beneath or near where it WAS

Shadowing us

Shadowing our body

As WE

A once lived

May shadow the place and places

Where WE once lived.