By Nancy Kang
Published in 16.4
Min, Mine
ghosts are
sentient, austere, ancestral
like ceramic dust, but heavy as bone-meal
seaweed tangle, the cool blue overpass,
the bent grass, the long looks backwards
but it is not anger, a gnashing of stolen gold molars
but a gently sad presence, the sloping shoulders
of the elderly, the lifejacket deflated with merciful strokes
as when the mirror asks, edges aflame, for her smile to show
her best self, the ladybird in the light
but she answers, I have aged too quickly
safe in some brick stillness, fan whirring in summer
an office, a barstool in rain, some green window
fringed with dry leaves, wet red wood
she is a pink cheek in winter, breast-tender, smarting
at that cheeky striding by of some anonymous no-one self
sometimes forgets to lock the door while reading
but she is the first one there the next day
and I have never asked what was lost in the night
on the way home, on that highway lit by freight
wheels moving box by box, from Prince George
to this cold finger of land
tickling the sea her hair like a flap, flapping of neckskin or sealskin
her mouth looks like a stained fairground wrapper, red apple bright
her teeth are not mossy,
she is fresh
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