Last Monday, I talked to Bella’s ghost for the first time.
Last Monday, Bella had been dead for one week and two days.
Last Monday, I talked shit about her mom.
I don’t want to write about this.
I don’t want to write about anything.
Last Monday. She was just sitting there, on the foot
of my bed, olive green throw blanket sinking below her.
Love Island Season 5 paused on the tv screen on the dresser.
She didn’t startle me.
She looked like two years ago, like summer, like the last time
I watched her laugh and the last time I hugged her.
Long hair dyed purple. Light purple
acne scars faded on her cheekbones. Chipped black nail polish.
Olive green crocheted bikini.
I wondered if she was cold.
Warmed my own fingertips between my thighs
and touched them to my cold nose.
I feel like an awful person, I said. But she’d never ever judged me,
even when we were in middle school and I said things that were ugly,
like I hated my older sister
because she was tired and mean and cranky.
And I can’t imagine how your mom is feeling.
But waiting 2 months to have a memorial?
I need to go home.
I can’t be so sad on my own.
When I looked up she was gone.
When I looked down she was never there.
She was. No. She was.
She was here once.
I have pictures, so many pictures
but I don’t have enough.
Have you ever seen a ghost?
Have you made one up?
Before cancer took her [hair, lungs, esophagus]
she wore her long hair clipped half back.
Today I leave the house for class,
I wear my long hair clipped half back.
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Have You Ever Seen A
brick house at the left turn on your weekly drive to class
and stepped inside it? You have. Behind the door
at the top of the stairs: the stained suede couch you fucked on,
cried before she died and he held you.
His gray pitbull puppy on the floor
chewing a peanut butter bone,
who you fell in love with weeks ago
before you were alone.
The bar cart you gifted him for Christmas
holding liquor in the kitchen.
The light-up stars a past resident
stuck all over his bedroom ceiling.
If we’re going to talk about ghosts
then we might as well, like
how it’s 12:50 pm on Monday and he just got out of class.
How three days ago, he shrugged
that he was no longer happy, things change,
I don’t want this and that was that.
How you never told him you loved him
and thought you might regret it,
but now you’re actually glad.
Because his whole face changed
and you don’t know him.
How [this time] you just cried.
Didn’t beg for a different ending.
And when he rose from your tweed couch to go,
you let him.
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I had this dream about her. Bella. The other night.
And it wasn’t like [our cousin] Jake’s, right
after she died, where he said she looked confident
and okay and alive. Jake doesn’t believe in god
and he’s doubtful about any sort of afterlife, but
he said the dream gave him some peace.
He said she walked up to him, said nothing,
smiled and hugged him so tightly.
He said the sky was orange and there were flowers
and the sun was shining.
My dream was different.
I’d like to forget it, but I can’t.
She was still here, still sick,
still having surgeries. Our family
was waiting at my uncle’s house for her
to return from the hospital.
A car pulled into the driveway. My dad went outside.
He and my uncle carried her in.
She was strapped down
to a slab of wood and off the end her legs were dangling.
Like there was no muscle, no bone to hold them or
stop their swinging. I don’t know what all of this means.
I’m just telling you the dream.
Her chest and neck were covered in purple stitches.
They tilted her so she could look at us.
She didn’t blink or see me.
Her skin was the palest gray.
______________________________________________________________________________
Dear Bella,
I can’t carry this dream. I see your pale gray skin and stitches
when I’m supposed to be asleep.
Please please take it from me.
______________________________________________________________________________
Have You Ever Seen A
girl in the movie theater
seated alone—
No snack but a large diet soda, no,
but that married couple
who glanced fast and then looked back,
who lingered when they saw tears
shining on your cheeks, lit up by your phone screen,
they’ve seen her. And when you got up to leave
during previews, they watched you go.
Noticed that you hid your face with your hair,
wondered when you didn’t return.
And now, you write the scene
where they remember you on their car ride home,
after they’ve already disagreed on their ratings for the movie,
and they don’t laugh at you or roll their eyes or groan,
but rather, the man,
who looked at you longer, in wonder,
will turn to his wife,
did you see that sad girl in the theater?
And his wife will nod her head, not all-knowing,
but knowing a hurt woman well enough to say,
I don’t know when, but she’s going to be okay.
______________________________________________________________________________
Have You Ever Seen A
Lie:
Before she died,
I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.
We’d known it was coming.
For weeks. She had decided
to stop fighting.
What do you say? I mean, over the phone.
What do you say really?
And then something goes wrong with her feeding tube
and she has one day left at the very most.
And in those last hours, I don’t even text her.
I just sit on my bed and I unfold her letters.
They started in 2011. We were 12.
They started with
I’m sitting in my mom’s office avioding social studies hw.
I’m eating a strawberry pop-tart.
It’s really good!!!!
They started with
I have a crush on this boy with flippy hair,
he stole my skittles and said
“I think these ones are poisenous”
just like my dad does.
They started with
what’s new with you girl, tell me everything! 😛
They started small. Small like us.
______________________________________________________________________________
When I got The Call from my mom, I was leaving Planet Fitness in Tuscaloosa and I didn’t answer the phone. And I cried and coughed and choked on my own saliva in the car, and it was warm outside, and there wasn’t a single cloud covering the wide sky,
and I was alone.
And my whole family cried together in the same house back home.
______________________________________________________________________________
Dear Bella,
It’s been one month today.
Time passes different.
When I see you again, I’ll hug you tight and there’ll be flowers
and the sun will be shining.
I’ll ask what’s new with you girl,
and I’ll tell you everything.
