Haunted by Love

 I moved home because home was kind.

And I am home surrounded by all the things my ancestors held dear.

It is my job to hold them dear.  To keep them for the next generation.

But all day they talk to me, my ancestors.  They tell me to remember

the smell of melba toast in the oven.  The smell of freshly made apple sauce

poured on top.  A smell I will never know again 

in a house no longer ours, but whose every creak and crevice is as 

familiar as my own hand.

They scold me for letting things slide on days when I just cannot make

the bed, cannot even leave it.  Do that dish in the sink, remembering Annet 

pouring boiling water over all the dishes once she'd finished washing, 

the smell of her rubber gloves filling the kitchen.

Daddy's barn burned this winter during the ice storm.  A tragic, terrible

mistake made with the best intentions to keep the horses warm.  They died.  Children's pets.

The barn still had old toys I had left upstairs, confident I could go out and

see them once more.  I want to tell Daddy the story of our great, great uncle 

Robert, who slit his throat.  He never knew.  But Daddy died and it was too late to tell.

I want to tell him of Henry Munger, who disappeared and was never seen again.

He was a mystery for generations.

I found out where he died and where he's buried, alone in a plot in Beaumont.

But I learned too late.  How Great Uncle Alexander drank a bottle of carbolic acid when the head 

injury he suffered proved too much to bear.  Daddy knew none of these things and he

was ancient.  He should've known.

When Tommy Lu died and Daddy was bent with grief, I saw a taxidermied 

chicken in an antique store.  Daddy loved chickens almost more than anything.  

So I bought the creature.  Daddy kept it in the kitchen..

Today I pulled it down and dusted 8 years of dust from its feathers.  And wanted to show him.

See?  I kept it.  For you.  For love.

These ghosts are with me always.  Always.  They never leave and I would be sad to see

them go.  But they break my heart every day.  For love.  With whispers.