Ghost Stories

     I look at hubcaps of police cars at the late-night coffee shop. Inside, stool pigeons could be telling on me–fearful secrets from my childhood I’ve been waiting for years for someone to tell and get it over with. The man eating donuts at the counter is my father, spilling wheat out of his pants cuffs after driving fast over dangerous unpaved roads in a pickup that carries stories of his life all over it, but he disappears before I can reach him. The lady with her head in the sack is my sister. I pull it off to find it filled with salt, her eyes hard water oceans washing us away––the family that has ended too soon, lost again in her memory, trying too hard to get out. We are a wasted story.  Over.

No stories survived.
Some folks died away from them,
then the rest forgot.

For dVerse Poets, Momento Mori, haibun prompt.