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.