For Her Clara Smith

That little girl stalks me. She won’t leave. She isn’t angry, doesn’t shout or even frown at me. She just sits in the corner of my mind. Knees drawn up to her chest, encircled in her arms. Her head tilts to the side, watching what I do, hearing what I think.

Me before I’m sick. Her hair is blonde- it hasn’t fallen out yet or grown back a frizzy brown. The bones don’t yet jut awkwardly out of her frame. She’s still got those blue blue eyes- they haven’t faded to a duller gray- green. She’s not sick just yet.

I think about her loves. Sunshine, impatiens flowers, the river birch out the window. She smiled with all her teeth, cried while eyes were on her, and giggled without blushing. She gifted flowers to the neighbors, and complimented without thought. She questioned often without revising for convenience. Sickness is not smiles. So she traded her sunlight for fluorescents, grew tolerance instead of flowers, and watched snowstorms from hospital windows when she used to watch the riverbirch sway from her own.

I’m still a little sick.

I may never escape this gray. She hears this- and I cannot bear to look at her face. So I crawl another inch towards the sunlight. I ask my questions. I marvel at rainbows and romanticize the rain. I giggle when butterflies land on my fingertips. For her.

I fill my calendar and to-do list, to see the smile on her face at fulfillment. I sing beautiful melodies and descants- play music that moves with the depth and range of the ocean. She is kept alive by the music. In this way she haunts me gently. This is for her. for her.

Split ends

Esmé Brown