sweeps her hair into her mouth
as she speaks and eats.
She tucks it behind her ear.
“Officially an accident.”
“Officially?”
“I think he killed himself.
Otherwise he probably would’ve haunted me.”
Right.
To become a ghost,
your death has to be a surprise.
(Boo.)
People who thought it’d be easier
to be a ghost
than to be alive
found that out the hard way.
“How old was he?” Mickey asks Krista.
“Eighteen.
Like you.”
Another bite,
another struggle
against the blowing hair.
“You’re thinking of doing it, aren’t you?”
If I had breath,
I would hold it now,
waiting for Mickey’s answer.
“I don’t think of dying,” he says,
“so much as I think of not living.”
It starts to rain,
suddenly,
strenuously,