there's a ghost in this house
infused with the silk dresses folded in trunks
in the damp cool of the basement,
the smell of age and rot
coming in over cedar chips

her presence is felt
in the squeaky hinges
in the bathroom with no lock
in the uneven ceiling
in the dishes dripping in their cradle

she turns up to watch our little lives
our bodies curled in aggressive sleep
and in the moments before we are fully awake
she is almost visible:
stare at the crack in the plaster walls
and her eyes shine through

the house's boards pop at night
like our spines
and we all swallow the truth:

the house isn't settling
she's settling in

According to the minister, we’re lucky to have found you, although I think you’d have liked it better up there, where the grass isn’t golf course green and the mourners are nonexistent. I wanted to scream when he said that but momma was leaning hard against me and her breath was coming in harsh against my ear and I stood there with making fists until I couldn’t feel the cold. Dad was holding on to her hard and his mouth was a straight colorless line and his breath came out his nostrils in big measured puffs like the steam train in the railroad museum back in Lincoln. I didn’t cry at all, just stood there feeling sick to my stomach and bracing myself against momma’s leaning. In the back of the group of mourners I saw David and his eyes were down and he avoided my gaze.
The minister was the young one from Partridge who you once told me gave you eyes, back when you came to church. He looked sad like an actor looks sad on one of those TV commercials for antidepressants. He paused too much. When he spoke, he fumbled over the words and sounded them out like a third grader—sa-salvay-salvashin-salvation. It was like Aunt Stu’s funeral, with the same fake-looking flowers and the same ugly black pinafores, only hers was open casket and yours wasn’t.
The tables were loaded with wedding-style lilies even though your obit said in lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the River’s Edge Animal Rescue Center. Each tablecloth had a neat stack of Thomas Mortuary Services’ business cards in a holder and they served bland finger sandwiches with diluted instant coffee afterward. It was the kind of thing that youd’ve laughed at and blamed the church for.
I think the hardest part is that all the dozens of versions of you I created in my head died, too. I made an Amy who went to college and got her degree in veterinary sciences and started an ASPCA. I imagined an Amy who grew her hair out and cut the blue tips off and wore flowery loose blouses and played guitar. There was the Amy who trained service dogs for wounded veterans and the Amy who fell in love with a kind young man who picked her up on the I-5 and drove her to Vancouver. There was an Amy who lived recklessly and pierced her ears with safety pins in truck stop bathrooms on the way to see Less Than Jake in San Fran. I made up Amys with tanned arms and Amys with tattoos and Amys living in Carmel as an accountant. Every one of those versions died when we found you.
I haven’t been up there yet. They say you were up there for three months until that guy found you. They say it was painless. They say that they’re looking for the driver that did it. I don’t think they’ll find him, and I’m almost glad. I don’t know what I think about that.
I wish we could have gotten you in across the street. The stones there are all soft from rain and there’s no lawnmowers or fluorescent turf. The only disturbances are when the horticulturists plant new roses. After it rains the clay soil sticks to your boots. Plots up there are hard to dig in to because of all the old growth trees, and I imagine the old coffins have roots wrapped around them, like the pictures of veins going around the heart in that Biology book I returned to the textbook room a month after you slipped out our window the last time.

the telephone rings at eleven on a weeknight
and i can see you
huddling over a stranger's phone in the streetlamp glare
your skeletal fingers slow and stained with nicotine
pupils shrunken
deer in the headlights
what do you need

the telephone rings at eleven on a weeknight
and i can see you
plucking pills from carpet fibers
scraping your hands through the couch cushions
snatching my allowance from beneath my mattress
prince of thieves
what do you need

the telephone rings at eleven on a weeknight
and i can see you
smiling for the kodak
cooing sonatas against her cold pretty ear
nervous fingers tying the corsage
casanova
what do you need

the telephone rings at eleven on a weeknight
and i can see you
peeking out behind worn fort walls
sketching monsters over saturday morning cartoons
fishing pole in hand
sweet thing
what do you need

the telephone rings at eleven on a weeknight
and i can see you
rewind the tape
first tottering steps
gummy smile
child of love
what do you need

the telephone rings at eleven on a weeknight
and i can hear you
hello
yes
what do you need

I realized when the fish wriggled above me
and eddying currents of pyrite glinted like stars inches before my eyes
and wispy tentacles of my hair trailed my descent
that perhaps
just maybe
you deserved better.

You asked me permission to take a photograph
but this was in August
and what I remembered when your fingers fondled the shutter
was that once I was trying to take a test
but your shoulders were wide and clothed
and I studied the way your muscles worked
while you worked out formulas and graphed
and now you were in front of me
with your eyes squinted in concentration
twisting the lens toward my neck
and I felt as exposed
as exposed as the medical sketches in father's copy on Grey's Anatomy
skin flayed
veins pulsing
colored for ease of comprehension.

The wharf was busy; it was a Saturday and the sun was high in the sky. Strangely enough, it was hot. She wanted to get to the deYoung in time.
Eliza pulled impatiently on the hand and pulled her toward the circle of people, who were no doubt watching a street urchin or a performer.
“No, honey,” her mother said, “not today.” Eliza didn’t listen and ran up, wedging herself between the bodies of bystanders.
“Look, mommy! It’s a game.”
The man was a con, Marie knew this. She let Eliza gander.  
“One dollar a play, ladies and gents,” the man said, “sorry sweetheart, kids aren’t allowed.” Eliza looked up at her mommy and pushed a dollar in to her hand. Not wanting a scene, Marie smiled and put it down.
“Just once, darling,” she said through whitened teeth and a botoxed smile. She didn’t know why she was doing this. It came to her in the moment and so she acted.
The man put a ball in the cup and told her to watch so she did. His hands were swift and mesmerizing. She knew that the ball was under the right one. She pointed. He lifted. It wasn’t there. Eliza wanted to know if she could play and if not why. Her mother told her that it was a big girl game and little girls couldn’t play. Eliza started crying so Marie put down another dollar and let her watch, just to get her to shut up. The man twisted to cups again and she failed. It happened again. And again, and again. The deYoung would close, she knew, but nothing could compare to the feeling of winning. In the end, the man got twenty of her dollars. The museum wasn’t so important.
When they were in the Saint Francis’s elevators, Marie bent down and smiled at Eliza.
“When poppa asks, dear, remember: we went to the museum and had a splendid time.”

the sheets are green
with veins of colored clothing:
a pair of jeans,
a t-shirt,
a single sports sock
illuminated by a lamp craning its neck
the fitted sheet has opened its lip
and grinned a strip of stained mattress  

against the wall
your silhouette
rakes its hand through its hair
lungs expanding against cracking plaster
your arms refract on the spines of textbooks
and nicnacs your mother sent you from your room at home

usually I force myself coherent by now
but tonight I am content
watching you and your clinging twin
living lives identical but changed