For Now
Meg Sipos
When you die, you linger in all the spaces
you clung to in life. You haunt the corners
of every room, the passenger’s seat of my car,
the porch swing on the patio, the edges of the lake.
When you die, you tell me no one gets happy
endings. You say you miss the feel of my skin on
yours, the taste of butterscotch, the way the rain marked
your face. You ask me to eat rocky road ice cream and
detail every spoonful, the way it melts on the tongue,
the way the chocolate settles in the throat. You convince me
to go skydiving so I can tell you how it feels to really fall,
how the air pushes against bone in a way that leaves me
breathless, how the thrill colors the fear. For you,
I close the curtains at night and settle onto the couch with
a book of myths. We muse over the beyond, of all the places
you might go. Some days, you insist there’s nothing more,
but the words whittle into a thin, quivering sigh that
threatens to pull us apart. So we linger in these spaces
and I wonder how long we can stay, tucked away from
the world. For now, we’re together. For now, we’ll pretend.
Meg Sipos is a Pittsburgh-based writer, editor, and podcaster. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in MoonPark Review, Lammergeier Magazine, Bath Flash Fiction Vol. 4, The Ghost Story, Quantum Shorts, and 21st Century Ghost Stories Vol. II.