I want to know
how you contain your grief
or display it.
Rainwater collected in Mason jars,
overflowing in the latest storm,
spilling onto flagstones and moss,
washing away
the ghost of a beech leaf
fallen in November.
A black umbrella
too large to open indoors.
Not all ghosts announce themselves.
Some just leave objects behind.
When was the last time
you found a feather?
A woman I worked with lost her daughter.
Now, heart-shaped stones
crowd all the windowsills in her house.
If grief is the sadness they left us,
then haunting is the part of them
that stays.
These simple legacies:
My friend—
she always touched the side of the plane for luck
before boarding.
She covered her teacup with the saucer—
“This helps with the brewing.”
My grandmother taught me how to move
through the world
without once revealing
that as a child
she picked up the phone
when the sanatorium called
to say her 13-year-old sister—
a sister she never knew existed—
had died of an epileptic seizure.
She was the one
who had to carry that news
about the daughter they had hidden.
Why hasn’t my dog haunted me
or even appeared in a dream?
My hairstylist believes
it’s because her death was unconflicted—
proof of the life we made—
loved more than I’ve loved most people.
We took turns sitting with my mother-in-law
while she was in hospice at home.
During my shift, she was silent for hours.
Then, suddenly, she shouted, “Snoopy!”—
a dog they’d had decades earlier
but I’d never heard his name before.
So now I think the Rainbow Bridge thing
might be real.
Or maybe we bury grief
so deep in the body
it stops asking to be seen.
I will haunt you:
I won’t be a cardinal feather
landing at your feet—
have you ever even seen one?—
or a hummingbird—
but you will damn well know it’s me.
Before I die,
I want to be worthy of haunting.
