I will always hold my ghosts close 

Ainsley Kennedy, United States

i. Stood in the middle of Goodwill yesterday and I thought of you. Flicked through the sweaters, which were so unbearably scratchy on their haphazard bent hooks, and my fingertips got stained with their ghosts. I stood in Goodwill yesterday and thought of you, thought of how I could never shake off your ghost, thought of how every time somebody braids my hair my first instinct is to reach back and touch your shoulder. 

I stood in the middle of Goodwill yesterday and thought of you. I found this vintage sweater you would have loved, and I almost sent you a picture but you were driving to Iowa so I thought — I thought of you crashing and said maybe not. It was your sort of green, though, the kind that goes with your eyes and makes them sing. That sounds sappy but once you’ve spent six years staring 

into somebody’s eyes, realizing with every blink that this is a friend for life — once you’ve spent that long, it’s impossible to forget. 

ii. Stood in front of my closet yesterday and I wore a crown. At some point in ninth grade I threw my false crown of laurels into my hat bin, and I just found it. Put it on my head, looked in the mirror, and the funniest part is that I think I was wearing the same shirt as I did when I last wore that crown but I looked so different. I stood in front of my closet yesterday and it was both a symbolic and literal closet, you know, and then I purged it of all my insecurities, or I purged it of the clothes I wore when I was most insecure. 

I stood in front of my closet yesterday and I wore a crown, and it was the most freeing thing. They say crowns are heavy on the head but perhaps that only applies to metal — the flowers on my head made my heart soar above the clouds. I want my future self to be wearing clothes that make me feel like a nature spirit. I want to wear a crown of leaves and tell a photographer — immortalize me among the trees. 

iii. Stood at my sewing machine yesterday and if reincarnation is real then I think I must carry my great-grandmother with me. A ghost came to my side and pressed the seams with me, threaded the bobbins, helped me sew a curved seam. I felt her warm hands press flat against my young cold ones, and the wrinkles tugged at me. I stood at my sewing machine yesterday with my great-grandmother’s ghost, she who shares part of my name, and I asked her if it was okay if I came out like an imperfect seam. She hugged me from behind and said that even if I came out different, she was still there to guide me through it. She pressed her crochet hooks and knitting needles into my hands and said, “I give this future to you, because I love you”. 

I stood at my sewing machine yesterday and sang a song to my ancestors, and it came out in the form of seams and sketches for fantasy worlds and futures. I told them I was reclaiming, renaming, reforging myself like I was some sort of godly weapon, some beautiful wonderful thing, and I asked them if they would love me no matter what. But I never waited to hear their answer, too busy forging ahead to look behind because I was running, not away but towards, and I sang of love and longing too complex to name. 

iv. Stood in front of the world today, and I thought of you and Goodwill and closets and nature wraiths and ancestors and love, and when I thought of all of it my heart came shining through my chest. I stood in front of the world today, cloaked with love from all of my ghosts, and you said I love you and my past self said I love you and my ancestors said we love you and I said — I said a lot of things, but mostly I said I love you too.

Ainsley Kennedy is a shy aspiring author from the Midwestern United States. Pulling heavily from mythology, the natural world, and the people she has met, she uses her works as a way to better come to terms with her own identity and the world around her. When she’s not writing, you can catch her reading, baking, working at the library, or lurking in the back of the local coffee shop.