An Unkindness of Ghosts

by Rivers Solomon

It was hard to imagine the dead having adventures. It was hard to imagine her as a person at all.

People were so often mean that when they weren’t, there was a tendency to bestow sainthood upon them. Aster did not reward common decency with her affection.

Friends who hated each other were no longer friends. Sisters who hated each other remained sisters, despite long silences, feuds, and deliberate misunderstandings.

She looked neither male nor female, but if one were to pick—and people so did like to pick—they would choose male, of that she was certain.

But Aster understood now that kings don’t die. Even when they do, they have sons, and those sons have sons, and so on.

We’re all glass, busted up, unrecognizable from our original selves. We walk around in fragments.