“
The second someone passes,
they write their way into poems that aren’t theirs.
Granddaddy steps into a chicken car, waving. Giggling.
The day someone dies, you worry much too hard about
whether or not they’d like what you’re writing, if it would
bother them if you wrote about someone else.
You wonder if they can see what you’er doing, writing,
thinking. You wonder if your worrying disturbs their rest.
If you are sure you don’t believe in these things,
you wonder why you wonder about them.
from “On Whether or Not Ghosts Are Real” by Shanny Jean Maney
