An Unkindness of Ghosts

by Rivers Solomon

“It’ll all go to dust one day anyway. The sooner you know that, the better. Whether it’s today, tomorrow, a million years from now. Why do you want so bad to be remembered? And by who? They won’t ever know you. Not as good as I know you.”

She was standing on the edge of a new world and so ready to jump. How Lucifer felt upon leaving the Heavens. He didn’t fall. He dove.

Tears ran down her face, and it was the second time today Aster had to see a woman she loved cry. They were all such weak, soft things. Chalk.

Sadness twisted up inside her, like a rope or maybe like a snake or maybe like a rosary. Whatever it was, this gangly sorrow, it had tied itself around Aster’s vertebrae and would remain quite a long while.