Ghost Stories

People always told me you were not the first one. 
How your mother did it before you, and maybe her mother before her. 
Your anger is family history, your coping skills oral tradition. 
Merely something to be expected. 
The stories dance like ghosts. 
They are haunting- they keep me up at night. 

A terrible thing happened, and so you wrote it down in your bones. 
Copied it into your fingers, your feet. 
Mentioned it to your heart every morning, did not let it beat without reminding it. 
At night, you told the stories to the moon. 
Let them take flight in your dreams, slither their way into your innermost being. 
Did not let your soul take over. 
Let the ghosts stay. 

You grew up. 
Forgot about the ghosts, figured they had always been there. 
You did not flinch when your mother told the stories to your sister. 
Did not wonder if maybe the ghosts did not have to be there. 
Got married and moved to a campfire. 
Told the stories every night. 
Raised children in the woods. 
We are thankful someone got to my sister first. 
Blew out the candle when she went searching for the ghosts. 

There are things I want to tell you. 
Things I wish I didn’t have to keep locked inside. 
Like how every time I stuttered a question you retold the story. 
Made me memorize it. 
Maybe someday I would tell it from memory. 
If I covered my ears, you only told them louder. 
I moved, but the stories did not stay around campfires, they followed me home. 
Everywhere I went I saw the footprints, and wondered how they got there. 
I wonder how I remember the stories so well even now, long after the fire has been put out. 
I wonder why I can still see the footprints, and why the ghosts still cloud my vision. 

But I do not say these things. 
I am afraid of how you would respond. 
How maybe you would rewrite the story, retell it in a new way. 
Give me something new to discover, like a secret treasure- something I don’t think exists.
Something I wouldn’t know what to do with if it did. 

I do not care how far back the stories go. 
Which great-great-great-great someone started it all. 
You see, my sister and I, we are not interested in writing a sequel. 
We are more interested in changing the stories. 
We do not tell them the way that you did- the way that you do. 
Yes, they are still ghost stories. 
Yes, they still dance. 
But the thing about ghosts is that for as living as they are, they are still dead. 
They do not have to stay here.

Mosaic

The reason I drink peach tea,

And read Annie Dillard,

And watch Parks and Rec,

And listen to any podcast, 

And know who Billie Eilish is, 

And smile when I see bunny slippers,

And laugh when someone talks about clif bars,

And want to go to Argentina,

And search for the impressionist paintings first,

And read Infinite Jest,

And cry when I hear most Taylor Swift songs,

Is because it makes me think of you. 

And you, and you, and you, and you. 

I am made up of the people I have loved,

And of the people who have loved me.

Bloomer

Where is my prize for being the latest bloomer?

I smile, Look at me, I say-

I’m grown up now. I have new glasses, new hair.

I bought a new sweater just last week. 

And you smile back and applaud.

Look, you say-

You moved on. Packed it all away. Became something new. 

I have spent twenty-four years in this body.

All of my metaphors about hands, and eyes, and how it feels to not feel like something. 

I spent two years away from you.

And suddenly my metaphors are about caterpillars and poppy seeds. 

Things that become something else. Things that bloom. 

I am not yet certain of myself. But I will pretend to be.

Velveteen

From 2020

I cried today, about the Velveteen Rabbit. 
You see, I heard someone say the virus stays on clothes after it leaves people,
And I figured that must be true for toys, too.

And then I remembered how the boy in the book got sick,
And how he had to watch his toys burn.

The Velveteen Rabbit was the first book to make me cry,
And that is why.

The boy found his heath, but the real things were gone. 

And I suppose that’s my fear right now,
That we’ll find our health, 
But the real will be gone. 

And perhaps that’s pessimistic.
Perhaps it’s too sad to imagine a world
In which we forget how to be together. 

A world where, 
After this over,
We forgot how to be real.

Sense Memory

There was a game we’d play in elementary school where we’d ask each other, 
“If you had to lose one of your senses, which one would you choose?” 
I always took this very seriously.
I’d think, and think, and think, until I’d eventually always land on smell.

If I had to lose one of my senses, 
I would choose smell. 
Everytime.

I figured this way I wouldn’t forget my mom’s face, or how my grandmother’s cooking tastes. My sister’s laugh or my grandfather’s jokes. 
I’d feel hugs and see mountains and taste the cake on my birthday each year. 
After thinking it over, losing smell seemed like the only logical option in an irrelevant game.  

No more smelling garbage or litter boxes or holding my breath on city streets. 
No more dirty socks or sweaty classrooms after PE. 

Logical. 

And then, one day years later, 
I woke up and couldn’t smell my coffee. 
I went around my apartment picking up anything with a smell-
Nail polish, candles, the blanket my grandmother crocheted for me. 
The litter box. 

Nothing. 

And suddenly I thought back to elementary school.
How my answer had been so logical, made so much sense. 
But when I opened my window, took a deep breath, 
And was met with a one dimensional breeze,
I blinked back tears. 

I avoided stories of people who’d had the virus and couldn’t smell two years later.
People who, yes, could see, and taste, and feel, and hear, but smell was gone. 
I tried not to think about going to Mendocino and not smelling the salt air. 
Or hugging my mom and not smelling her hairspray.
Going to my Grandparents’ house and not smelling Sabbath lunches. 

Pulling laundry out of the dryer and not being met with a rush of warm detergent and fabric softener. 
Picking up my cat and not breathing in her fur. 
Climbing into bed and having my wet, shampooed hair fall in my face and just feeling the cold.  

Having to stick to the same lotions and body washes because I remember I liked how they smelled when I bought them.
Never feeling the three dimensional warmth of a blanket and cool of Seattle air. 
My younger self had been wrong. But, then again, there is no right answer. 
Not when it’s suddenly a relevant question.

And when I got out of the shower the next night,
And sprayed my lavender linen spray out of habit,
And smelled the sweet flower,
I grabbed my cat,
And smelled my own skin,
And burned every candle,
And curled up in the blanket,
And opened my window,

And breathed in so deep.