gently used slightly haunted

[evieshka]

My mother and I stood in the ruins of an amusement park and watched old ghosts pass through. We scrambled to collect the beads they dropped -

millefiori glassworks, carved pearls, strings of old bones.

Possibly animal.
Probably human.
Likely mine.

We fought a private war as we so often do over a vigil candle that exactly matched some pink Murano beads until she at last assented and let me have it.

That is to say: we fight private wars often, usually without words, distance being a more fatal weapon than fists.
And boy, she lets me have it.

(I think my mother is the ghost.)

The candle was sort of incidental.
But I won it, first prize in the Battle of the Beads, so the history book includes it.
I studied it in the dark
(forgetting that candles can be lit,
forgetting I held a light in my hands.)

I noted the decoration of a soldier bear.

I'm too old for bears, I said.

I pressed it back into her hands and walked away. Does that make it spite or surrender?

(I think my mother is the ghost.)

A husband came along, though I don't know which one; there have been so many. He told us about the restoration of the light show, and did we know about the seventy thousand Edison bulbs in use to represent the rise and fall of mankind?
My mother showed him the candle.
Apparently, one flame is enough for that sort of production.
(That's how it started, anyway - mankind and our lights.
A single flame in the dark.)

Oh, the bear on the candle - The bear had departed to serve his state in another war.

Or whatever it is bears do.

I'm not making this up.
I promise this story is true.

Problematically, I can't find the beads I collected, intending to make for myself a necklace or maybe to sell them on an internet marketplace, advertised:

beads, gently used, slightly haunted

(I think my mother is the ghost.)

So I don't exactly have any proof. But if you see that bear around, he'll probably back me up.

(I think I'm being slightly haunted.)