The Endsister

Una says into the room:
I know what an endsister is
And nobody hears her but me.
It’s a kind of a ghost

My children are ghosts.
Visitations.

Later
She says it again
Pressing more insistently
Against the air.

Frederique
Who is seven
And has only recently uncovered
All the secrets of the known universe,
Corrects her

It's an ancestor.
It’s like
Your grandmother’s grandmother.

Una’s disappointment and mine
Make the same pale figure.

She shimmers once,
More real than your grandmother's grandmother,
Before she disappears.