The Old Grey Horse

Recounting the words of a ghost is enough to keep them living because the words that we share accompany us into eternity.

When I think of my grandmother I think of words. She had no tattoos but when I see her in my mind I see words on her skin, dotted randomly down old fingers her wedding band breaks the space between them. They are drifting both soft and firm in her atmosphere.

When we recount her words she feels so alive that it is enough to set me upright. She may not be here to wear her words on her skin, but my body can make room for them. I can wrap her moments of truth around my spine and allow those of softens into my hair.

I know her words aren’t mine but now that she’s gone they feel like they belong to me and I refuse to set them free. I can call on these words when I need her and they fly to me as clearly as the moment they were spoken.

My grandmother did not know that long after her body was gone her words would still float over dinner tables, above pillows at night, and in the spaces between people that look like her. I think that if she would have known this she would have spoken far less.

She would not have viewed her words as gifts to us but capsules that she must prepare to weather eternity. She would have searched for better more worthy things to say and she would have ruined it.

It is not profound statements rehearsed to perfection that I remember but her completely ordinary ones that taught me about living.

I remember when she got on all fours to play pony and gave me a ride around the porch. When the fun had finished she struggled to get up. She told me, the old grey horse ain’t what she used to be.

She was right.

I understood time and aging before death ever entered my life. I can visualize myself in that same spot on her old blue porch and the words fall around me. I can hear them spoken in her voice and I am six-years-old again.