though about to go on stage.
The cemetery was on this steep, steep slope,
ankles buckling in their black-heeled shoes.
The greyest sea beyond, the houses far below.
Everything to the side of grief. Even the sun
beside the point, you know?
The priest was young, I’d watched him
kiss the book and thought the kiss a little wet for death.
Anyway,
the undertaker almost lost the gurney
to the slope.
I willed it, I confess!
To speed past your small, mean widow and her
ghoulish friends, and shoot over the edge, to make one
final joke, refuse the grave they’d dug for you,
take flight –
now there’s a death!
Do you believe in ghosts?
You must, Ava. I don’t.
And yet I have seen two.
Seen one, heard another.
As a child, whenever I had a fever, I’d hallucinate:
clocks, where no clocks were, the hands spinning
at a weird speed, too fast but also sort of… lagging.
It’s common, I’ve heard, in children – maybe you used to
see things too.
Sometimes I’d see the ceiling gently falling in,
a train hurtling towards me – much too fast… and yet
too slow.
During one especially bad night, my mother called
a doctor. He asked to speak to me, she handed me the phone.
What can you see? He asked. He had an accent, maybe
French.
A train, I whispered.
What you need to do, darling, he said, is board that train.
‘Darling’ – I know!
No doctor’s ever been as tender since!
Thing is, Ava, it worked. I never saw the train, or clocks,
or ceiling
coming down again.
