familiar bits terrify most when understood least
The ghost in the guest bedroom is not a slim 30 something. She is not 170 cm or so, with brown hair pageboy cut as in the ‘60s. That is how she appears to us, but she is not a ghost. We overhear each other, but aren’t in conversation.
She is much older, for starters. Less featured than the feisty Jays at the feeder or the racoon, who resembles a cartoon bear. She is a hundred million years old and has no form for which I have eyes. Ancient, she is dull grey shapes hunting at the dawn of time.
I met her at age 14 in the San Juan grocery. I met her as a toddler on a porch in the Dakotas. I hear her in the whirr of ice dispenser. She is in the creak of the floor, wind to an unlatched screen door. She sleeps on the window side and guests vividly dream of trees.
