ode to the ghost of my grandmother

I don't know what the ghosts of my family are doing
except that my grandmother holds my face in her hands and smiles
and she is wispy and white and she has never been to new orleans
yet the tear on my cheek contains her

some days I feel greater connections with those I have never known than those who have watched me grow
some days I sit in the cemetery and brush the headstones clean

in the next room there is the ghost of my mother, her soft hands on my young shoulders:
she would have loved you, in abundance

across the street there is a hundred-year old house, its chipped bricks covered in ivy:
there is new life here, in abundance

Stephanie Holden (she/they) is a Halloween-loving queer living in New Orleans, Louisiana. She writes poems about love, trauma, gore, and the self. Her interests are fantasy books, body modification, and the South. She has two cats, a bearded dragon, and deep love for frogs. Find her Marxist take on Shakespeare in The Journal of the Wooden O, her poems at The B’K (forthcoming), her art at BEST SERVED COLD (forthcoming), or her narcissistic tweets at @smhxlden.