Dear Ghost,

I like old things, story crumbs left behind.

Making a tomato garden in the back yard years ago, I dug up a spaceman. Aqua-colored, the plastic had a funny texture when I rubbed the dirt away, and his fish-bowl helmet and air hose looked more Jules Verne than Apollo Eleven. He was a very old little guy, and had been lost for a long time.

Value or collectability never occurred to me. What did occur to me was the little kid who dropped him in my yard fifty or sixty years before, and went to bed sad because they had lost their toy. Most kids didn’t get a lot of toys when the spaceman was new—for sure no kid who lived in my house was rich. The spaceman was missed.

It seemed reasonable the traveler got lost while playing in high grass, so it must have been full summer—a beautiful day like the one I stood in with my tomato plants. The sun just as hot-in-blue, the sound of wind in leaves the same. The girl or boy had likely grown up, moved away, had jobs and kids, gotten old and died. I wondered if they ever wondered about their lost space friend, before they faded away.

“I found you,” I told the spaceman. “Finally. You can go home now.”

Then I buried him again, with the new plants. I don’t grow tomatoes anymore, and the spot where my garden used to be has disappeared beneath wild mint and plum trees at the edge of the Messy Woods. I don’t imagine anyone could find the aqua spaceman again, even if he’s still there.

I kinda think he’s gone back to that kid, but I only came in at the end of the story and he’s mostly not my business.

Maybe one fine summer day, when everything is warm and possible, somebody will brush the dirt off me and wonder where I came from. They’ll marvel that a funny old spaceman came so far, crossed so many years. It will give them a tiny heart-stab, a shiver in the sun.

If I could talk, I’d tell them about you, Ghost. I’d tell them about your voice, and your laugh, the way your eyes felt when they touched mine. I’d tell them never to worry more than they have to, and to believe in good. I’d tell them there are monsters in plain sight, smacking and basking in hot sun, but there’s true love, too. There are waterfalls. I’d tell them we all go home, sooner or later, so don’t be too afraid.

On impulse, they might lay me down in warm dirt, among the tomato plants, and cover me against the coming winter. The green will soak me up, blossom, and send me back to blue.

Made from light, I’ll ride the summer day across galaxies, back to you.