modern seance 

sometimes i wake up & my grandmother
has made a facebook profile. she's been dead
for almost ten years. i do not miss her
& i feel badly about that. when she's online
she messages me only in italian, a language she spoke
but never spoke to me. instead, we used to talk
in the ugly bridge language. her apartment bathroom
had soap shaped like seashells.
i would cup them in my hands & hold each
to my ears in case they whooshed like
the real seashells. i did not hear the ocean,
only a phone call coming through the walls.
a dead husband. a dead clock. the cats, standing
on their hind legs & dancing. on facebook
she posts pictures i have never seen before.
i am small & sitting on her counter eating pastrami.
she shreds the meat. cold in my hands. pepper 
in my teeth. pictures of our hands. pictures of
a beach when she was young. the ships. the boats.
streets in philly flush with snow. window cakes.
wildwood spring. in her pictures,
she tags me instead of my mother. her mind 
is a thicket. tangled & precise.
in her last months she did not know who most
of us were. i was always my mother. my mother was
always her sister. on facebook she will sometimes post
prayers. i do not remember her being so devote.
in fact, i think she does it for show. maybe hoping
to meet an angel on the glow machine. 
i refresh her page until it is gone & there is
no remnant. the pictures gone with her. 
once, i interviewed her for an elementary school project.
we were supposed to ask if our grandparents remembered
pearl harbor. the only thing i remember 
about her response was, "i was sitting on 
the end of my bed with the phone in my hand."
was there a phone or did i imagine it there?
i cannot predict when she will come but 
if i am honest, i can summon her. all i need to do
is weep & roast a tray of roots just like she always did
on fridays. then, the profile will return
even if only for a moment. i eat the roast.
sweet from baking. she sends me a meme of a 
greenland shark. neither of us understand it.