The Scream
BY ANNIE WENSTRUP
clapped my grandmother’s mind—
too much blood, its pressure
attenuated a thinned balloon.
I was half a continent away,
as far as my kindergarten hand
could span on the map. My body
was my legend. In her passing
a light bulb’s filament flared
and popped. Electricity crackled
in twilight, the alien ozone
of a different life clung to me
and I took it in. I don’t believe
in ghosts, but thirty years later
my mom’s aneurysms glowed
against the imaging. The doctor
spoke. The thing about ghosts
is they can be coiled and clipped,
their screams stoppered if we catch
them in time. The thing about ghosts
my mom says, is that corked, I still
hear them. The thing about ghosts
the life insurance agent tells me,
they live in your coding. You’ll never
roust them out and I can’t underwrite
a haunted house. The hospital’s
janitor doesn’t speak to me. He leaves
me and the ghost behind while he hush
hush, hushes bleach across the floor.
