The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Teaching a Wild Thing by Kindra McDonald

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Death of a Ghost

Dear K,

Could we send letters back in time?
Crying now over the death of a ghost

a weight so buoyant the pallbearers
could be mice, mournful and misty-eyed.

No harm has come to pass,
I might say. Wishful thinking,

you would say. Hindsight is 20/20—
and we’d both laugh. If I wrote a letter

to myself, I’d hold it up to the light
warm the invisible ink over fire

watch the alphabet spiral to the clouds
like smoke, hear the sad, same three notes

of a bugle leading a funeral procession.
You could turn my letters into words

or into paper airplanes you could race
or crash or hatch into new life, you would say

I told you so.

Love, K

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