I Consult a Spiritualist by Merna Dyer Skinner
29 lines
Issue 9 (Winter 2025)
Here’s the room with everyone in it. Your dead friends
passing through you like wind through a wind chime.
—Ocean Vuong
Is Emily with us? I ask. Yes, says the medium,
as if speaking from a distant space—she mutters,
It’s so expensive to die in Massachusetts.
In the corner, wisps of paper flutter above the credenza,
a lone tendril of smoke lifts from the burning tip
of patchouli incense. Yes, she repeats, then waits.
Questions tangle in my mind—like mysterious particles
of matter, dark energy, adrift in my cosmos. I try
to corral them, to query Miss Dickinson about love –
but her dialogue with death bangs
at the door, creaks floorboards beneath my feet,
rattles my cerebral rafters. Undeniable,
undeterred death. Love, I repeat aloud. What of love?
I want her to whisper in my ear the weave and weft
of affection, assure me that love is more than fragile
bliss that slinks away when night relents to morning
light. Can she show me something? I ask, *Scraps—
envelope flaps folded to reveal or conceal her
lines of adoration? *The medium takes from me
my volume of Emily’s poetry, Final Harvest—
turns to a page near the end—trails her finger
along this line, Truth must dazzle gradually—
I have so little time left, I think—this insistent ticking
in my chest, this thumping heartbeat in my head.
What of loneliness? I implore, What of desperation?
In her faraway voice, the medium replies, Remember,
loneliness is still time spent with the world.
Who is speaking? I ask. Ocean, she utters, taps a small
gong. That’s time, she says, skirts rustling as she rises.
