I live in the house my grandfather built when
he was young and strong, and
filled with love and dreams.
Where I lay me down to sleep
was once my mother’s room.
She tells me how her father would
sit on the edge of her bed and
kiss her goodnight on her forehead when
she was small like me.
Every night, I listen to my grandfather
walking the floors beyond my room,
dragging his leg with a cane in a
thump-step-scratch rhythm against
the aged wood boards that creak under his weight.
No one else hears him in those late hours
pacing the hall and around his room with a
thump-step-scratch and asking
for his deceased wife.
My mother doesn’t believe my complaints
despite the bruises painted under my tired eyes.
She tells me that a man who’s been dead and buried
for years higher in number than my age
can’t possibly be keeping me from sleeping
with a thump-step-scratch pulse.
I may never have met my grandfather,
but I have become familiar with the
thump-step-scratch tune
of his specter.
Tinamarie Cox lives in an Arizona town with her husband, two children, and rescue felines. Her written and visual work has appeared in many online and print publications under various genres. She has two poetry chapbooks with Bottlecap Press: Self-Destruction in Small Doses (2023), and A Collection of Morning Hours (2024). Her full-length debut, Through a Sea Laced with Midnight Hues, releases in February 2025 with Nymeria Publishing. You can explore more of her work at tinamariethinkstoomuch.weebly.com and follow her on Instagram @tinamariethinkstoomuch.