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Ella W.

Chronology


I leave homes like shedding

skins, and sometimes when I tell people

I lived in Germany, I think it's

wrong to say 'I,' because it

wasn't really me threading

together stems of daisies there.


I imagine a sprite haunting

paths between the golden wheat fields,

long brown ponytail flying behind

her-- not the pixie cut I wear now

like a crown, and I pause, wanting

to be her. It would be


simpler if more things stayed,

but who alive doesn't have infinite past

selves dying on the lips

of each and every moment like

forgotten conversation, strayed

from the topic at hand?


It's more that moving gives

them a home: the versions of me

I no longer am have their own

duty stations to haunt. And the

long-haired girl still lives

picking daisies in Germany.


Or did she quietly follow

me on the flight back to the states?

It seems so sometimes.

"I lived in Germany."

The words no longer feel hollow


when I realize that she,

as a ghost, is not bound by such rules

as being in only one place.

She can easily be in Germany

and still live inside of me too.

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