m e g h a n    l a m b

Dead Friend
 

One time I had a girlfriend who was dead. I was trying to tell her the way to see ghosts when she died. We were walking in forests somewhere when the sky started raining. The tree shadows blocked out the sky and the sound of the train.


My friend used to have lots of freckles. Her blonde hair was white. Her leggings were two twig-like skins of charcoal dust and dirt. Her hair was always blurring with her stories and the rain. Her big sweaters brushed me with feelings of gray so I hid them sometimes.


This girl was really cool for a dead girl. She carried a small sack of seeds that she scattered in shapes to protect me.


She whispered yes yes in a voice that brushed my hair in all the wrong ways.


I wanted to make her a shape so she wouldn’t seem weird anymore. I wanted a girl shape carved into a space in the dirt. I wanted to lie in the shape and pretend I was dead too. I wanted to put things inside the shape so they’d be safe.


I couldn’t figure out what I should put inside the shape. I threw in things I found like bits of broken glass. I watched things pile up inside her til they threatened to fall over.


I tried to dig new holes to store the overflow. The rain came down and washed it all away. I whispered no no no my fingers splashing numbly through the flood. The pitter patter of the rain was like her laughter.

 

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MEGHAN LAMB lives in Chicago. By day, she works as a training counselor for adults with special needs. By night, she goes CRAZY. She also edits for Love Symbol Press and Red Lightbulbs magazine. Her words can be found in elimae, Pank, Spork, Nano Fiction, Everyday Genius, and Metazen. Her first novel, Silk Flowers, is forthcoming on Aqueous Books in 2013.


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