We make pumpkin pie together.
My mom’s wife used to make us popcorn, glorious popcorn, popped in oil and coated in butter and so many cloves of garlic we could hear the vampires overhead, flapping their bat wings faster and faster to escape the waves of garlic wafting from the windows, and then of course nutritional yeast because nutritional yeast appears in your cabinets the moment you understand you are a lesbian, and there was salt, and pepper, and while she made us the popcorn my mom and I would sit like baby birds, watching her, our mouths open with popcorn want.
But when my mom’s ghost comes to visit me, we make pumpkin pie. Neither of us can cook so we use canned spiced pumpkin and one egg and a crust in a box and we whip the cream in a bowl with a whisk which we call cooking and we laugh in delight because we are together, and just like always the pumpkin pie seems to take hours in the oven but it means we get to spend longer, squatting in front of the warm oven window, saying words and words and words that seem like a conversation but all mean I still dream you’re alive, I still remember the feel of your calloused hands, I still can’t look at photos of you even though it’s been ten years, I still, I still, the words all mean I love you. I miss you.
And when the pie has cooled and we have each smothered a piece in whipped cream, my mom’s ghost leaves when I’m looking away. When I least expect it.
