The orange sweater, the empty silverware drawer; the corner by the bathroom sink.
Brie passed on the orange Horton Hears A Who sweater to me the spring I turned 21. We laid out on the carpet laughing, huddled all our drinks close at a Chili’s. The elastic from the bottom hem cut, Horton’s wide elephant eyes faded. Six years later and 72℉ in the summer is freezing. When I reach for the sweater and pull my arms through, I lose myself in the smell of cigarettes on the sleeve.
The ghosts are borrowing my clothes again.
Delia, chain-smoking in the kitchen; solid as a sheet of rain. Standing by the exhaust hood in my running shoes. Neither graceful nor grouchy, but two feet firmly rooted in the plane she’s long since left. You leave the windows open too long. It’s bad luck to let the night in.
The better half of last week was spent emptying the dishwasher, fishing my fingers down the silted bottom of the garbage disposal. Four butter knives go missing. I check the stark white walls of the fridge, the back of the bread cupboard. My boyfriend jokes there must be faeries in my bathroom fan, burning knives on the electric stovetop to get stoned while I’m gone. I start buttering toast in the morning with a wooden spoon.
Delia says there’s not enough food in the fridge to feed a parakeet. Smoke serpentines from the corner of her mouth. You don’t put the steak knives to use. She’s not rude, but manners don’t fix the kitchen sink. Her sweat-curled hair slicked with working. I want you to be sharper. I want you to use your teeth.
The dog keeps barking at the front door—my neighbors can’t sleep. I stop dreaming of running through red lights. My curls grow wild and wider; a part of me always out of place. When I reach for a stack of bobby pins on the bathroom counter in the morning, my hand hits the tile. I know what she’d say. The freezer hums in the cracked red pepper of her voice. Let loose. The dog keeps barking at the front door—my neighbors can’t sleep. One night I wake barking louder.
A phantom playing tag with the present. I don’t see Delia for two months, then spot her by the window, one heart-shaped pothos leaf barely catching in her hands. She doesn’t mother me, but reads me the better way to living like she doesn’t look up from the newspaper. Like I’ve added too much salt to the pot roast and she can tell by smell alone. Not like that, like this. You know better. I know you know better. It’s enough that I don’t mind. A tssking at a chewed bottom lip or second cup of coffee. An invisible hand winding the record player dial down. But when summer comes, after I start cracking the windows back open at night, I always find my blankets,
newly cigarette-stained,
gently folded on the couch corner.
with love,
schuyler (sky-ler)
venmo: schuylerpeck