Silly children...
play with mirrors
as if we were doors,
portals to other times.
Theirs are night-games,
indulged in dark
imagination.
As if my hand-held cousin,
carried upstairs
walking backwards
could show the faces
of husbands or death.

Really.
We show only what we are shown.

Of course, in our years,
we have seen husbands
and deaths.

The braver child
will call upon us
in necromatic glee,
invoking the shade
of Mary Worth
to appear through us.
A cosmic crap-shoot,
depending much upon
Mary's mood
that particular night.
Three times
they call her name
before me,
hope they see her,
pray they don't.

I have been shown many
a Mary's death...

many a child's, too.