I was in my old BIA-built house on the reservation. I was so tired. I was trying to find somewhere to sleep that felt safe. There was smoking and drinking, and across the room, there were unidentified bodies in my bed.
There was a banging on my window. I saw the ghost of an old Seminole man scratching at the window and banging his head against it. He moved too fast in the dark for me to see his face. I held my breath. My sister reminded me that he couldn’t hurt us. She’s two years younger than me, but she felt as old as the land beneath our bodies.
It aches to be surrounded by a suffering that was there before you were. It’s loud and you want to leave. But they’re just ghosts, they can’t hurt you. And you need to be able to see them, to accept them as the foundation of your home, because they just simply are.