Pre-script (or Pre-mortem, Pre-haunting, the Present)

Every time she says goodbye she wonders if this is the story she’ll 

retell as her last memory of him. 

If it will be the blue patterned shirt that he put on 

because they were going on an adventure that day, 

if it will be the bathrobe he says he’ll change out 

of and then forgets. Will the story be how she drove him 

to a park, clenched her jaw watching him navigate 

to a bench. Will it be the way he knocked her hand away 

when she tried to help. Will she think of the words she used to 

fill his silence or the way he told her how much he loved the geese.

Again and again. Will she remember how proud he was, how she 

tried not to look at him, as if he could see the whole truth behind her 

eyes. Maybe the story will be that he didn’t want to leave his 

room, the way she sat on the twin bed 

she’d picked out for him last year and went through old receipts, 

throwing out the garbage when he wasn’t 

looking. Will it be that she left early because she’d run out of things to 

do with her hands. Of ways to fill the silence. And when she’s half asleep 

in terminal B, she takes inventory of the memories,

whispers reassurances to herself, waves off the ghosts she 

knows will come to haunt her. Assures the ghosts as 

she assures herself, that it’s not their time yet, 

that there is enough 

presence to go around. That there is enough present. That there is