Meg Sefton's Blog, page 58

orange

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Drying Oranges, Library of Congress, flickr

You have to be a girl living on the southside of Orlando, a preacher’s kid, to understand walking home from the bus stop with your sister, the smell of the Bluebird Orange factory in the air – sweet, cloying, inescapable, like fate, like dread, like death.

 

spirit

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Spirit by Dreena, DeviantArt

When Mom’s spirit visits the old building where we live now, where we sleep on a dilapidated mattress, she sobs. Why is it ghost cries blend so carefully with wind, their light melds with leaf filtered sun? She tells me it is almost Davey’s time to die.

red sweater flashnano day 1

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Photo by Sara Darcaj on Unsplash

My ghost is wearing my red sweater. After papers were signed and locks were changed, I realized I left behind the sweater as well as a French cookbook. Would she try to cook from it? I’m telling you now she will suck. She doesn’t have the finesse that comes only with age. And a lot of cooking.

She is straddling the stadium seat and laughing hard at something my ex is saying. Her hair falls down beneath the hem of the sweater, something I’m sure pleases him. Men pass by and stare at her backside.

She attends a funeral of a family member of my ex’s, someone I knew for over twenty years. We were close. But I was not invited. I text my ex, force my way in. She is there beside him.

“What is she wearing?” I hiss to my sister.

“You are just like Mom,” she says.

I bring a flowering rose bush over Christmas Eve. I feel a little guilty for the grief I may have caused.

My son is there. I say hi. She takes the bush and doesn’t thank me. She’s wearing my red sweater.

The moon kisses my head through the open sunroof on my way to midnight mass.

I don’t care anymore.

I just had to see my sweater one more time.

ripe

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Pittsburgh, Thirty-first of October, Two thousand and seven, Mike + Tiffy, flickr

Pittsburgh, Halloween, night sky ink-ripened, having relinquished the sun, sees the sisters to the party. Cars careen over brick streets, sending flecks of ancient coal dust into the air. The witch sisters bring early winter solstice gifts to the host.

catch

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Hotel Clelia, by Nico Cavallotto, flickr

She caught the infant in the hotel’s pool light, an over-sized kidney bean. The mysterious guest had told her, with a gleam, “Nothing ever dies.” It was her Emaline, her dream, a miscarriage but alive! How to explain? Her heart reeled. She held the bundle and rang the concierge: “Diapers?”

injured

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Birdman by BlondeWatchmaker, flickr

Clinical Lycanthropy: Injured patient Edward Hocs believes he is a giant bird who will swoop down on criminals and rapists and peck their brains out. Under observation for thirty days: Only manifestation of hallucination is attempt to perch on bed frame, curled toes, but, failure. Hence, evil continues its reign.

ride

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Hay Ride Here, Michael L., flickr

My first Halloween hayride my mom told me to tell any boy who might want to kiss me “My mom says no” which I knew I would never say. Mom these days is experiencing the onset of dementia. I search her face for any last lesson. She has retired.

coat

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Nature is a Haunted House, Nicholas Erwin, flickr

Lady death’s dark coat is long and ragged, dragging in its train the stillborn, accident deaths, junkies, the weak and infirm, victims of famine, disease, and war, dead bones clinking and clanking, the reek of flesh. Souls are not her purview, only death’s physicality, its inevitability, our commonality with animals.

dark

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Ghosts, Jeffrey, flickr

It was in the dark that she, adopted, met her mother. Before becoming aware of her mother’s suicide, she had been only curious. Now, confronted with the sweet smell of rotting flesh, long ragged nails brushing back her hair, she wished to return to the ignorance of her childhood.

tasty

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fangs_by_dominiquefx_d2d7lcj DeviantArt

Bitsy got drunk at the Halloween party. She pretended to bite men’s necks but secretly slipped off her fangs and nuzzled them and kissed them, both married and single. “Mmm, tasty,” she said.  Later we found her fallen off the curb, neck broken. Rumor had it she had been shoved.