dedicated to a ghost

1.

today i read some words that told me why i should
be angry.

2.

one day when you are three years old,
suddenly your brain will be able to remember trauma,
and i do not know anyone who doesn't know
that horrible sick feeling in their gut or that awful
anxiety like you are trying to swallow a rock.
three-year-olds are going to aa meetings.

3.

my real grandmother is dead. i have caught
my reflection in store windows and my mind has asked
me, what on my face is hers. what of me once belonged
to her -- my mother says she found supreme joy in
mozart and bach and in orchestras, her best friend
has told me she had the ability to taste the texture
of words and that she sometimes sees her expression
in the gentle sloping of the skin around my eyes.

4.

i think i understand through the brief glances of
myself in reflective surfaces as i pass by, i think i just
might understand what it must be like to have a deity
from which all of your attributes have been given. this
understanding makes me shiver, this understanding
makes me angry. i am speaking plainly, i have
thought of her often since i became aware of the fact
that she once existed but was extinguished in the
violence of crushed metal and broken glass. i am making
sure that she is not forgotten because if i had never
known her and i remember, perhaps someone i had
never known will remember me.

5.

her name was alice anne.