My Grandfather Taught Me How To Read
No one warned me that the dead visit in dreams.
Or that the smell of gasoline sticks to memory the way it sticks
to skin—my childhood bus stop at the end of the street—
But visit, they do, and stick, it does,
With no reason to wish for them to stay
Until daybreak comes again and
What’s left is the irksome feeling of
Forgetting where you are—the crosswalk by the high school—
How you can be two places at once:
Around the corner from your grandparent’s house / in a town you’ve never been to.
A gas station at six in the morning / a stop sign off a main road.
Dead / eating at a restaurant that doesn’t exist.
Diana Morley is a senior English and adolescent education major at SUNY Geneseo. She has one previous publication in the Songs of Survival Literary Journal. She primarily shares her work on an Instagram account, @deempoem.