Mother Ghost Consoles Her Invisible Daughter

One day you’ll be the birthday girl.

You’ll lick icing from your fingers, and you won’t fear the fire

That sweeps the top of the cake with long flaming fingers.

You’ll hear the song they sing;

They’ll be singing with you, for you, inside you,

And you’ll sit quietly,

Silently virulently still.

Butter will stick to the roof of your mouth as snowflakes stick to the roof of the house that you haunt.

One day you’ll have sound to spare.

Someday you’ll live in a world all your own.

You’ll walk to the garden and feel under your feet the grit of yesterday’s monuments.

One day you will be the haunted,

Instead of the haunter,

And you will be filled with a sickening, thickening joy.

Sickening,

Thickening,

Memories quickening,

Thoughts turn to bickering,

Beckoning me.

What if I’m nothing but stillness?

What if I’m nothing but air?

What if you’re nothing but nothing?

But I know you’ve never been there.

Nothing Gold