Brandy Lien Worrall-Soriano

My life in Mifflintown is dissipating into memory.
The house, the land, the landscape, the people.
Pretty soon, all I’ll have to go back to will be graves and thoughts of where people, places used to be.
My Ghost Town.

My cousin and her husband live in Meemaw and Pap-Pap’s house now. Meemaw had this big open kitchen. I seem to remember yellow linoleum, or maybe it was yellow countertops, or yellow walls. And this neat isosceles trapezoid step up into the living room, with lots of plush furniture and bowls of plastic bananas and apples and clusters of purple rubber grapes that were fun to squeeze. And Meemaw had a

sun room with a
gliiiiiiiiiiiiiider.
I’d glide for a long time and look at all her potted flowers, stare out into the road.
Meemaw would glide with me sometimes, when she brought over a stack of mail for me to go through—

“My eyes ain’t too good no more. Now be a sweetie and read some of this junk for me.”

I quickly went through the mail, discarding most but keeping the sheets of Easter Seals stickers. I was 10, but it wouldn’t be til my late teens, when Meemaw had already passed away from diabetes, that I learned the truth.
Meemaw and Pap-pap were illiterate. I never knew anyone who had this rare illness. I thought of times when Dad would tell me to show Meemaw how well I could read, and now I realized that he was getting me to tell Meemaw stories.

I read. We glided.

Next to Meemaw’s house was the trailer I lived in til I was 1. Beside it was Mam and Pap’s house. I liked our big house, but it would have been cool to live between Meemaw and Pap-Pap, and Mammy and Pappy—my godparents and grandparents. So much warmth on both sides, I’d think always.

Glide. Glide.
And the last time I saw her, she couldn’t see me. I looked into the opacity of her pale blue eyes, she turned her eyes to the sound of my young adult voice.

“Oh, Brandy, so good to see you.”

I bent to hug her
put my face into her frail neck.
Her arms fumbled and trembled
around my back.

I’m happy to see you too, Meemaw.
Glide. Glide.
See you next time. Next time.

Next time.
I’m starting to say those words with bottomless sadness.
One day, there will be no more “next time.”
One day, Mifflintown’s landscape will be full of used-to-be’s,
diaphanous slivers of an aging mind trying so hard to remember
and iron-clad regrets that the youngins won’t know at all no more.
Glide. Glide.
My town full of ghosts.