Trembling at the beach
on a day meant for indoors,
tossing her ashes
like a paper airplane
in the wind,
we knew it was
always going to be this way—
she was always
going to come back to us,
one way or another—
her ghost on the cereal box, first thing,
her costumes hanging in the attic,
somehow noisily animated
after dark.
Each of our eyes
a Lucky Strike,
red-rimmed and wondering
how to pilot
the rest of it
without her.
For the List at Shay’s Word Garden
