Homebody, Homespirit

Sweetly she haunts,
a toothless ghost. I catch her
hiding in smoke from the old stove;
a scent like toasted chilies in sweet oil
she loved so much, and a flavor like scorched bacon
coats my throat.

Opening and closing
the ball fringe curtains, tending
pink flowers in pots on the porch, tiny, bent,
slow, one of those old ladies who knew the art of being
frail as a posy,

Indomitable as oak.
She said, “When I die, hija,
burn me and throw me in the back yard.
I want to be home.”

Her jewelry
still turns up in odd places:
china teacups, the medicine chest, and other
curious bits: a coin purse full of bobby pins,
a tube of lipstick under the mattress, a wad of bills
in the laundry soap.

Bottles of homemade wine
on backroom shelves under dust,
a holdover from the days her mother-in-law ran bootleg,
brewing beer and bathtub gin, but here are no other ghosts,
only her memories that were her own,
now going.

I want to be home, too,
my urn on a shelf in the kitchen,
and a pile of stemmed chilies beside my plate.