“Notes on the Existence of Ghosts” by Franny Choi

I understand the gravity of a train from the empty space and afterbirth air I encounter when I run down to the platform twenty seconds too late. It is the same with all things of such weight – to know them best when you have just missed them.

Snow angels; the power of an outline to name an absence holy, a finger pointing to the inherent fiction of angels and therefore haunting.

If the stars have, as they say, been dead for millions of years by the time their light reaches us, then it follows that my retinas are a truer thing to call sky.

In “Notes on the Existence of Ghosts,” poet Franny Choi considers how the absence of something can occupy space as fully as the thing itself. Rushing into an empty station, she feels the wake of the departed train without having to see it. A body in the snow leaves an impression that takes on a life of its own. Choi evokes the feeling of sitting with one’s loss through these small, everyday moments.

The poem brilliantly pinpoints the aftermath of losing a loved one — the sense that even their absence is a part of them, sometimes the only part that seems in reach. But Choi never actually mentions death, even when she writes of a bird colliding with a window: “A crime scene outline saying, Take this, the dust of me. Remember the way my body was round and would not move through glass.”

Poet Franny Choi
Credit: Graham Cotten (FrannyChoi.com)

Choi is a queer Korean American poet and spoken word artist based in Northampton, Massachusetts. She published her first poetry collection, “Floating, Brilliant, Gone,” at only 25, while her second collection, “Soft Science,” came out in 2019. Choi also founded Brew & Forge, a social justice-centered book fair, and co-hosts the poetry podcast VS.

Choi’s poetry wanders through a range of subjects that are often heavy and fraught, but does so with patience and gentle curiosity. “There has to be space,” Choi said in an interview with The Paris Review. “Space is an unknowing for us to engage with. There has to be room for questions. Silence is not just a space to mark a death, it’s also an opportunity to reveal.

“Notes on the Existence of Ghosts,” from Choi’s first collection “Floating, Brilliant, Gone,” is a beautiful, minimalist meditation on the nature of absence. For those who have experienced loss as an entity that demands its own seat at dinner, Choi’s words ring true and powerful.