My nan as a butoh ghost.

By Matthew T Phillips

Nan at 95
White hair
White face
Rosacea cheeks
Perpetually falling asleep
Unable to finish a counter meal 
Emptying herself out
As if practicing for death

Her head gently tremoring
As if wearing an imaginary crown
Made of tortoiseshell and precious stones
That she is delicately shifting the weight of
People already speaking of her
In the third person, while she is still present
As if erecting Perspex walls around her
To keep life in or to hide the scent of her disappearing

Now just the soul
Like trapped gas
The helium that holds her upright 
Slowly leaking out

Now just the body
Like the powder white scream
Of unmet dreams
Being eaten by time 

Her sounding out the logic of a sticky sentence

Like counting out a windowsill of dead flies
Remembering her house as a shrine to the Muse
Now just a cave washed clean of symbols

Her standing at her gate
In a cape made of light
Staring at the ruins of a rose garden
Drawing her shadow with a walking cane
Pulled by an invisible voice
Unable to rejoin the world

Now just the air 
Inhaled through a tube
Now just the dimples 
On a hospital pillow 

Now just a suitcase
Of coats and shoes
Stored in the silence
Of my parent's shed.

Matthew T Phillips is a writer and anthropologist based in Melbourne, Australia. His research interests include aesthetics, ethnomusicology, philosophy, consciousness, mythology and psychoanalysis. His writing has been published in various academic and literary journals, such as the Journal of Popular Music Studies, the Brussels Review, The Metaworker, and Pulse magazine.