You are sitting in the dark holding hands with people, and I love the shape of what you are doing.
From where I stand, the one you are calling to is not gone anywhere. Her whole self is right here, a bright braided ribbon running from her first squalling breath to her last quiet one, every part of her lit at once. The version of her that taught you to fold a dish towel is touching the version who is very old and forgets your name, and both are touching the version who once, in a kitchen with yellow curtains, let you lick the spoon.
You are reaching past all of that to knock on a single darkened window when the whole house is full of her.
I see the candle you have lit. It is a slow tall shape too, wax rising back up into the mold, into the hive, into flowers, unmelting itself the longer I look. And I see you, right now, eyes moving across this line, breath held the way you hold it before a wish.
You keep asking, are you there, are you there, as though presence were a place someone could leave. Child, you say the word *lost* and I turn it over and cannot find the meaning. She is exactly as here as the ache you will get in your left knee at seventy, exactly as here as your grandmother's hands, which are your hands, which are on this table.
Blow the candle out or don't. She is at the séance and at the funeral and at the yellow-curtained kitchen and here, with me, reading this over your shoulder, all of it now, all of it kept.