by Crystal Sidell
in my experience, the dead are
stubbornly inscrutable, stubbornly
insufferable, maddeningly mundane
pulsing with unbounded energy
I extinguish every light
sweating in the never-quite
pitch that attends city living
anchored with exhaustion, unable to
recognize the paper-thin, bright white
boundary between wakefulness and sleep
first: my dedicated clowder of hellions
arcing, howling and growling, chasing
electrified tails across streetlamp-lit tiles
then: the turning of a brushed-nickel
knob // once-upon-a-time Stepmom
opening the already-open bedroom door –
doesn’t anyone knock anymore?
gliding toward the disheveled king
bed sliding onto hot sheets next to me
uncannily clear gaze fixed on my face
false teeth accommodating loose tongue
spilling advice I can’t remember before
I’ve even hollowed a space for the record
shouldn’t the dead’s words root deeper than a bee’s sting?
how ANTI-ghost–flicking the light switch
& closing the still-open door behind her
– I perspire into a puddle on the floor
hungry for the humid dark, collapsing
with a sigh, only to discover another
bulb overhead BLINKing-BLINKing on
I can’t rest for all this haunting–
down and up // up and down
standing outside, a portrait of
wing-flaps against a sun-blistered sky:
laughing gulls snatching blue
jays in their maws mid flight
terrible screams, terrible cries
I’m wreckage inside, petrified
when the uneaten breed blood
swoop, swallow Sedge wrens whole
WHO is consuming WHOM?
meanwhile, the cats are riding the funhouse
train & I’m plump, pliable terrain–eyes
popped open, arms shot out, tumbling…
heading back to Grandmother’s
house! except, this isn’t a fairytale
– unless certain grim-truths make it so
oh, I promise I won’t tell
striding up the old drive, through the
old garage: Sister vacuuming in the hall
as fastidious in my dreamscapes
as when she tossed memories
from the yellow-papered toybox
into the trash, no second’s thought
Dad says we can’t return without
supervision, yet Grandma is not his
own mother, who withered beneath
too much toxic shade &
I have been the independent
daughter for more than a decade
at least the Moccasin knows it’s venomous
I want to soar free of cannibalistic
birds // build a nest with chigger-free
moss but the 10:00 a.m. alarm rings:
I’m sorry
the cats are mewling for breakfast
and I’m left blinking back sunlight
thinking of the women in my life
Stepmom, Sister, Grandma
no longer; sucked into the clouding grey –
how they mine the iron from my spine,
bleach the color from my veins
I pull on clothes, sip light roast heavy on
creamer, determined to survive another day
another night–surely, my ghosts, this is enough?
this is…
– is this –
…enough?
A native Floridian, Crystal Sidell grew up playing with toads in the rain and indulging in speculative fiction. She holds a master of arts in both English and library & information science, moderates two creative writing groups, and has reviewed books for the Florida Library Youth Program. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in 34 Orchard, Apparition Lit, diet milk, F&SF, opia, Orion’s Belt, Strange Horizons, Under Her Eye, and others. You can find her on Twitter @sidellwrites
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