The way we hold space for ghosts By Jane-Rebecca Cannarella

The way we hold space for ghosts.


I carry an acorn in the pocket of my jeans and its small form is a binding oath that I use to evict
spiritual entities. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the brownish cap and the green body and I
picked it up and kissed it like I was Peter Pan or Wendy or whoever fucked with that thing in the
story. It seems like finding acorns has become rarer and rarer these days. If this isn’t a vessel for
fastening a demon by oath, I don’t know what is.

Its cup-shaped shell serves as a reminder of the day I was first freed from thoughts of your ghost.
And during that instant, I was happy—the leather body commanded my presence out of a fog of
thought. But negative contemplations are like shitty specters, swooping in like smug Draculas
swooshing out from behind a curtain and it was no different following the acorn kiss. Clouds of
reflections blotted the brief happiness and the plunging weight dragged down my shoulders. I
hunched my bird's wings in an arc to protect my heart.

The problem with ghosts is that there’s no amount of space – within me or without me – that they
can’t take up. They’re feelings without feeling and I have yet to learn the mechanics of holding
onto an outline. I’m scared I’ve grown used to your hauntings.

The breaks in my body are how I hold space for ghosts. Memories are a philter that I can’t help
but drink from.
                                                                                              ***
I set a dinner for lonely suppers. Hot pans on the end table leave rings in the starch of the wood
accompanied by plastic ladles that I eat out of—spoon feed myself whatever slush I heated up.
Ghosts can eat wherever and whenever they want and I feel unseen and alone as I try to swallow
meals that are all too salty with un-cried pride. Hunger is how I hold space for you and I continue
to save you a seat at this table.

I’m told that a fatty acorn can make a meal, sort of like almonds. Maybe the shell I carry with me
is an icon filled with the banquet of our history. I wonder if eating the acorn is the ritual that will
release you, but I’m no fucking Jesuit and I don’t want to anger the authority of the amulet. So it
stays in my pocket.
                                                                                              ***
There was a time when I wasn’t afraid of the buzz of text messages and anticipated their
vibrations like a pulsing heartbeat. Bzzz bzzz bzzz. Friend. But ghosts can’t type messages with
their tree branch fingers and the silence is loud. I text “Me” to my own phone number so when I
get the message back I know that I’m still alive. 8:45 AM: Me / Me, 2:56 PM: Me / Me, 7:27
PM: Me / Me, 5:15 AM: Me / Me, 6:00 AM: Me/ Me, 6:05 AM: Me / Me. I don’t know how
shadows communicate, but the thunderous hush of an empty phone makes the silhouette of you
ever present. Now, I shrink from the sound of the occasional hum because I know it’s never
going to be who I want it to be.

In absentia, you’ve learned new tricks. Your ghost is inescapable and it takes up space in the
cavities of my insides. Is the acorn an exorcism or is it a tree that grows you ever larger? Has
connecting you to a symbol I carry kept you flowering? Lots of time, I wonder if I can ever out
run anything, should I even try. You flourish even in death. So, I hold steadfast to the gift from
above and maintain that it is a harbinger of future freedoms. A mini cauldron to contain the
negative floaty species you’ve become.


If I knew how to drive I would keep the passenger seat buckled all the time. Safety options for
spirits. But since I don’t know how to drive, I walk everywhere with the storm of nostalgia
whipping up a tornado that engulfs my whole body.

Walk walk walk.

Sometimes, there are whole hours I can go without thinking of the past as feet pass over
pavement with jelly legs. Remembering that I’ve forgotten makes me so grateful I say a prayer of
thanks to a clock, but it’s only moments until I’ve remembered that I forgot and then I remember
again. We make room for ghosts by shaping time into an unbearable ouroboros. You are a belt
wrapped around my body. Fatigued soles and I head back home, the medium in my pocket
rattles.  
                                                                                             ***
The earth’s magnetic field is dragging westward and I think that maybe with the earth moving, I
might as well hustle out of here, too. Move west with it. If the earth can move forward, why
shouldn’t I? Restaurants and shops and parks and fast food spots are cratered with shades of you.
Those places are covered in cobwebs, darkened with the ash of what remains when a person
becomes a ghost. If I leave my home will I be free of phantoms? The leaden feeling in my chest
is your apparition and I’ve been embracing that weight for so long I wonder if its absence will
leave me even more orphaned. But I’m willing to exercise you from the space inside, move my
whole body away and follow the earth’s lead.

I hold the acorn in my hand, I press it against my mouth. I will the acorn to be the instrument of
your exorcism. Make it a spiritualist that will trap and change your ghost into a tree, or a
memorial plaque, or a meal like almonds, or a dent of silence that puckers in a distant memory
shriveling in on itself and eliminating the pockets and passages of a space once saved for you.

​

Jane-Rebecca Cannarella is the editor of HOOT Review and Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit.  
She was a genre editor at Lunch Ticket, as well as a former contributing writer at SSG
Music and Sequart: Art & Literacy. When not poorly playing the piano, she chronicles
​the many ways that she embarrasses herself at the website www.youlifeisnotsogreat.com.

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