These Stones We Push
After the death of my grand-
mother my mother, curled in bed,
asked everything I knew of ghosts
and if I believed in them.
Not the white-sheet archetype
of ghost, but the type that serves
a greater truth, a truth that dissolves
into pure energy, disbursed
like fluids of light. I told her
my cousin knew her house
was haunted, finding cigarettes
burned to the filter’s hilt, un-ashed
how uncle Charlie smoked ‘em;
and how she sang to cassette once
and heard the voice of her aunt,
a disco bunny dead ten years
of an overdose, sing with her.
Those things, those ghastly things
were real and could be touched.
She bathed in the explanation,
the explanation of a child’s wild
yet empty knowledge. The fire
of her hair brushed back across her eyes,
her eyes doused in blue, scanning
the signature of each word.
And she was flushed with comfort
to the construct and nature
of knowledge, to place in our path
these large unmovable stones.
