the lawyer already had a copy of your will but i was searching for the original when i found a picture of you from college, stashed in a box that also contained old essays and a review of your first book. taken off my guard, i felt a younger, more lost version of myself rising up, raising its voice plaintively. like all ghosts she was unseeing, unreasoning: dangerous, like all ghosts, in her single-mindedness.
i urged her to be at peace, tried to tell her that i had grown (after all) into someone able to claim your affections; i tried to explain how in return, you reshaped the past for me, neutered whatever pain still remained in those old hurts.
all she could do was stretch out her arms to show me her wounds, open again and bleeding; all she could say was that she craved; she needed; she hungered.
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