I feel like I’m looking at her through a steamed-up windshield, my breath hot in the car, raindrops colluding into rivulets on the glass. There she is, a fuzzy outline, obscured movements, gestures like caricatures of human movement. The car idles. It chugs. If I unlock the door, I am afraid she will turn to vapor, will dissipate as she reaches for the lever.
Perhaps this initial image is a turnaround. It is me on the outside as the car glides past in the rain, arc of gutter water against my legs. Is that you, Jenna? I cannot hear. She is something familiar but no longer reachable. My eyes strain to make sense of what I see through the glass.
I was a little girl once, frizzy halo of knotted blonde hair, spitfire youth, fighting against her as I joined with her. We overlapped for years, were one and the same, with roles reversed. Mother, child, artist, pragmatist. None of it makes sense anymore. We are changed. I am changed. What does it mean to let in the full human being when I am a ghost?