Ghost 19

by Simone St. James

What in the hell is wrong with you? Why can’t you just be a normal woman?

I have never been the maternal type, part of what is wrong with me.

I think we can all agree that the mechanics in my head are faulty. The propellers are intermittent, and there’s a leak in one of the fuel lines.”

“How long have you been staying here?” he asked. “A thousand years,” I answered.

I knew that kind of weeping. I’d cried like that—not just put out, or angry, but a storm of emotion let loose in an unstoppable wash. It had all the marks of a cry done in secret, let out in that judicious moment when no one can see, when no one will know. A cry done on schedule so that no one around you is inconvenienced and life can go on.

All over America, women cry like that in toilets, in their cars, and on their back stoops every day.