“It is clear that if one has a substantial collection of molecular groups, then it is quite a difficult matter for any other creature to pass through the groups, but a so-called ‘ghost,’ which has its molecules widely spaced, can easily pass through a brick wall.”

You read that in one of Daddy’s unopened books. I saw it through the bookshelf, him busy with finite things while your little hands with fingernails splotched with Mommy’s nail polish tipped the big book over. You thought the nail polish made you look older. It didn’t.

When you moved to Florida, I was one of the many molecules of salt in the water, the ones Mommy told you to taste. And I remember making my home on the tip of your tongue and seeing all the words you couldn’t articulate.

I was the passing of time and the taste of candy cigarettes being replaced by real ones, eventually finding myself in the stale smell of the basement where you’d know that Dad wouldn’t catch you and your boyfriend. And I was the fraying fiber of the mattress your other boyfriend kept in the back of his car. You looked older now, and you didn’t even need the nail polish.

Then you’re young again, just a little girl, and I swayed in stale air while visitors came and went, and I saw the way you looked at each new face in wonder. I was in the shower steam of New Mommy’s house, where Daddy told you to sit and wait in that uncomfortable dampness while they spoke upstairs. You swung your short legs back and forth under your chair while all that heat of the friction of human life against human nature just melted your past into a smooth glass. Don’t touch it.

I saw you wrestle at night in your bed with the idea of consciousness without form – a “ghost,” if you will. You came to the resolution that a raindrop can’t find all that many answers before it hits the ground.

So you want to dissolve, and I want to have structure. But everything from the stars in the empty sky to the formaldehyde in your nail polish is built upon molecules, and for that, I’m sorry.

Your new home was two blocks away from the cemetery where your grandfather was buried and still is. Deep in the cold, dark earth, covered by forget-me green grass stamped flat by obligatory grievers. Two miles away there’s a bustling airport where humans get about as close to the sky as they’ll ever get. You never traveled far, and you never visited your grandfather.

Of course I was the memory of shattered snowflakes that reminded you of a poet you couldn’t remember. You saw these when the radiator burst, leaving you and your dad stranded on a highway in New Hampshire. You chose to leave those lovely, dark, and deep woods, and the voices in your head told you it was a bad idea.

I heard the slamming of a screen door, and I felt you ignite me as I sat in dark liters deep inside his car. No words were exchanged. Your knowing father looked blankly through the foggy window as you jerked out of the driveway. That’s when he and I knew you were leaving.

I look down and realize I am and always will be the suffocating sky above the open road, the same one you drove down as you got the hell away.