ghost currencies 

trading dead moths & bees,
the ghosts sit in the attic
& talk about tastycakes.
how once they could taste
soft yellow cake & once feel
powdered sugar on their fingers.
the house is made of backwards.
a little boy whose head fell off.
two women with teeth for eyes.
what they don't tell you 
about death is you can grow.
your spirit asking all the questions
it wasn't allowed to in life.
a man with the heaviest boots.
he paces & paces. birds fly 
from his mouth whenever he opens it.
amoung them i sit as a little girl
playing with plastic dinosaurs.
i tell them i understand it is 
hard to hand fingers when there's winter
always coming to pluck them. 
i wear my hair in two pony tails.
the ghosts give me beetles
& napkins & thumb tacs.
wisdom is a caurousel. always coming
back around to the body you are.
not from age or experience 
but from radio tower spines.
i tell the ghosts i want to be 
one of them & they tell me the sun
is made of mandarin orange today.
that i should eat. that i should
hold a penny like a new face
& see what else will open.
they cannot leave the attic
despite my begging. i do not want
to remember my blood & my legs.
i want to be rich in the currencies
of the dead. i want to see
what they do. once, i asked the girl
what i looked like & she laughed 
& said, "a dark sea of pillars."
when i returned i looked in the mirror
& tried so hard to see it.
instead, i just saw a moth 
banging his head against 
a white hot bathroom light.
i waited for him to fall. 
his little windup toy life.
collected him as tender.