Backyard seances and the fear our own reflections.

My mom says we can't use an Ouija board
but my uncle tells stories about trying
to talk to his mother with one-- on the floor
of the aunts house with his brother who chose 
the questions while he road
shot-gun-- hands over the printed planchette-- 
They ate chocolate chip cookies 
with m&m pieces between attempted phone calls--
hands hovering in a desperate thrill of anticipation
only know by children who believe in ghosts
and Ouija boards and dead mothers--
we are those children who buy wooden crosses
to keep under our pillows and who learn
to repeat the "Our Father" in order to exorcise every
sigh and moan from a farm house in late August
or bitter January when the foundation cracks 
it's knuckles to keep warm.
My brother didn't like to be scared but 
I could talk anyone but my mother into attending
a seance with me-- I refused to go alone-- 
my brother told me to stop holding his hands-- 
and we made up magic out of pieces of hymns and 
bites of chocolate chip cookies with m&m pieces.
We sat in the backyard where there had once been
a plastic baby pool-- a circle of dead grass--
an omen and Billy said he knew that it 
was from the baby pool but that it still
was scary and that he didn't like it-- I told him
we were too far-- that we couldn't stop yet--
that we had to hear them. The only sound was
our own quickened breath and Billy taking bites
of his cookie bribe. There was always a moment
suspended in time when I truly believed that I felt
something-- felt someone else with us and I would
whisper the line from a ghost story my
uncle told us before bed, "Are you with us?"
"Are you with us? Are you there? Knock if you can hear
us--" I said-- the middle-school medium who
talked to ghosts like Gods or prayers--
"I don't like it! I don't like it" Billy shouted
and I said "Don't be scared-- it was one of us."
Till this day I like to tell myself that
maybe we would have heard them talk
if Billy wouldn't have always pulled his hands
away-- I believe that for an instant they
knew me and I knew them and we talked about
bicycles and how everyone had eaten 
chocolate chip cookies seated on the floor--
they tell me about times when cars had
wide-eyes and hats had floppy pizza crust rims--
I tell them I'm not scared of ghosts
as much as I'm scared of being one
or what the ghosts might see in me-- would they
like me or would they think the way I use measuring
cups to eat baby carrots because of my OCD
is a waste of the little time we have to 
walk around in skin-- and of all the Ouija boards
and chanted spirit circles nothing
has frightened me as much as my own 
reflection in the blackness of a bathroom--
we weren't scared of Bloody Mary or the baby
she was supposed to be looking for--
we were scared because there were no hands
to hold in the bathroom mirror-- only the 
blurry reality of how dim our eyes looked--
how our faces could somehow be not our own
in the darkness-- how we could be alone
with the thought of being ghosts and what we would 
spell out if someone called us on a Ouija board
from the backyard of a farm house in the 
dead grass circle from a baby pool.