Small Ghost

by Trista Mateer

there are a lot of things she doesn’t remember doing she doesn’t remember running straight into her grandmother’s birdbath when she was a child either but she has the scar to prove it well she had the scar to prove it but she misplaced it with the rest of her skin somewhere it’s strange all the things you forget about when you can’t find the scars to prove they happened anymore

the cobwebs in her head feel so heavy, you know? and it’s like when they started spinning themselves it wasn’t such a big deal but now that they’re here???? they’re just so heavy/she’s just so tired/she’s just so/she’s just

she can’t remember when she started digging her own grave but now she can’t stop hovering over it

SMALL GHOST LOOKS TO THE FUTURE thinks about flowers on her kitchen table and the way light looks slipping through the blinds at 10am/ thinks about the taste of strawberries and creme brûlée and other people’s mouths fresh with toothpaste/ thinks about airports and train stations and how rain makes everybody feel a different way/ thinks about bookshelves and frost and instrumental movie soundtracks/ thinks about how sweet it might feel to be soft again/ thinks about thawing like ice/ thinks about budding like spring/ thinks about laughing until it doesn’t hurt to breathe anymore/ thinks about how hard it is to admit that she wants things because it means she might not get them then wants things anyway