Sai Tells a Ghost Story

^{(while practicing some version of surya namaskar [aka sun salutations])}

One morning in late 2010 I looked out my Pittsburgh apartment window where I always saw a parking lot, the Spinning Plates Artist Lofts, and a euonymus-lined part of the avenue, there at the beginning of Friendship.

I knew all the families living on the block because of the rescue dog I live with—we would walk around, routinely meet the people.

That early morning and only that morning, I saw out the window a figure of what seemed to be a like four- or five-year-old brown girl riding a bicycle up Friendship Avenue then fade away.

How else I know I saw a ghost is the child seemed so composed, happy, and it was way too early in the morning for someone so young to be out riding alone.

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“In this persona poem, Sai (one of the seven voices in my poetry book about gender, reproduction, and femicide, titled THE DAUGHTER INDUSTRY: A Hauntological Confession, Alternative History, Speculative Autopoetics in Seven Voices and Three Parts) tells a story about encountering a ghost. His story is tightly based on one of my own.”
—Soham Patel