Particulars
By Allison Heim

My mother swears up and down
that my father sat on his corner
of the bed the night after his death
in the usual manner to pick his toes.
She is normally a skeptic, but I’m positive
this was leftover energy, the last
undeveloped negative of a routine
I don’t question. Being gone is being
nothing but creaks, which she promised
were mice but are actually reverberations
of the past year; open the windows
and echoes of arguments and smart-assing
and slaps from spankings as unexpected
as mushy apples bounce around for ages
then float out and burst in sunlight.
A phenomenon commonly known as dust.

Some harmonica notes, low laughter,
and the essence of cartoons seep in
to pluck my skin silly and remind
my blood to grin and bear it—
spirits live like low buzzing in the carpet,
also known as fleas to my mother.
As with the tic the heater makes
when it comes on just once in winter
like a trick backbone, often
I am nudged by germs of captured
conversation pushing the surface,
ghosts of love now a parasite nuisance.

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