I watch my daughter dance
moving with a rhythm I wasn’t graced
the music of the world
pulsing through copper wires
we sing together
and I lose the tune
a fleeting dissonance
we won’t remember
I raise my hands
and picture my mother’s
open palms pumping
to a jealous god
my sisters and brother in a row
a nuclear family before impact
the sanctuary reverberates
with the sound
of our praise
We said goodbye to mom this year, watched her waste away from the inside out, from bone to blood to skin. She did suffer but much less than most, she died in her own bed surrounded by her children. We had a living memorial, we made peace and tried to say goodbye with no regrets but we all failed in our own ways. Nat wrote a song last week, the chorus says “We tried to close your eyes. We tried to shut your mouth. Did you have something left to say? Were you afraid of missing out?” I wept when I heard this. It was perfect, exactly how I felt, everything, the regret and guilt and horror all wrapped up neatly into a melancholy chorus. The last time I saw mom was Wednesday morning, as she lay in bed, deflated, eyes and mouth agape, stiff, rubbery with death. We tried, but they wouldn’t shut, wouldn’t let her be at peace. We covered her with a blanket, I don’t remember what color. We waited. I think Emiko stood in the back of the room, silent and invisible. Sarah rose from the couch, came in and left the room immediately. “She looks worse than before” she said, returning to the couch and hiding beneath her blanket. Nat and I stood by her bedside, two identical figures in the darkened room, trying one after another to close her eyes, to shut her mouth. We stood like tree stumps in a field, waiting for morning. Jay sat on the bed, the loyal companion staying with the dead. When they came to take her, fat men in dark suites from Evergreen Memorial, there was no terror as with dad. The fear induced panic in the chest, the panic of having something taken before you’re ready, of feeling the hand at your back push you from the bridge before you can jump; it was absent. I felt tired, distant, sad but not panicked. The ghoulish figure didn’t seem like her, and I was relived in some way to not have to endure it’s presence anymore.
The cloth, floral print bag was wheeled away, out the front door and past the porch that dad had built for us, past the ivy fence she had asked him to plant and into the black car with the two men. The door shut and the house was so still. We each went back to bed to return to our dreams and delay grief until the morning.
Ben and Sarah peered through the noodle-sized bars of the wire birdcage. Lying on a bed of crumpled newspaper, amidst the scattered birdseed and Sunday funnies was the body of Edward. Edward, or Eddie as his family had called him, was an unspectacular cockatiel of average size. Their family had purchased Edward at the twins insistence in middle-school. Unsurprisingly it became clear almost immediately that a bird was a poor substitute for the puppy their father had refused to buy them and the family nickname quickly evolved from “Eddie” to “Shut up Eddie!”. After the failed compromise, his father had caved, purchasing a corgi puppy that would break the seal of the “no-pets rule” and lead to a long line of cats, rats and lizards to grace their household. And so, for ten long years Eddie had remained in his corner of the living room. He’d seen two remodels, one break-in, holidays, gatherings and countless fights (once sending a fist through the wall uncomfortably close to his cage ) and the twins grow from tweens to teens to adults that now lived somewhere beyond the living room window. Now, “Shut up Eddie” lay flat on his feathered back, feet curled to his soft yellow belly, wings to his side, black eyes wide open, and stiff as a board.
“Shit.” said Ben. “What happened?”
“He starved to death” said Sarah, “Dad forgot to feed him.”
“Dad?” Ben said, “Dad forgot to feed him? Dad’s lying in a fucking hospital bed in the family room. YOU forgot to feed him, or Mom forgot to feed him. Dad doesn’t even feed himself.”
“Don’t yell at me.” Sarah said, staring at the tiny body “I don’t live here either, just like you. I’ve only been here a week.”
“I wasn’t yelling. We have to replace him” said Ben.
Sarah turned to Ben. “What?”
“We have to replace him before dad finds out.”
“He’s not a nine year old Ben” she said, “just take it in the backyard and bury it with the other pets”
“Dad’s days away, we’re not giving him bad news right now” said Ben, “we’re not telling him he, or we, or whoever, let his bird starve to death for fucks sake. I’ll go out and buy a new one. Dad’s barely conscious, he won’t know the difference.”
Sarah looked back to the cage at the white and yellow, average-sized cockatiel lying tits-up on the latest shenanigans of Garfield the Cat. She snorted and let out a half-hearted laugh at the irony.
“What?” said Ben.
Sarah turned and walked towards the kitchen without answering. “Do whatever.”
Ben was surprised at how light the body was. Had the bird always been so light? He’d often thought that death had a way of hollowing things out, and recalled faintly an article he’d read years before about a man who’d tried to weigh the soul. Orchestrating the deaths of his subjects to occur on scales, he’d measured the precise moments before and after in an attempt to prove the existence and weight of a human soul. He couldn’t remember whether the article said that the findings were conclusive but assumed that, of course, they were and that regardless of the stupid experiment the only things leaving the body when someone died were air, shit and piss. Ben slipped the tiny body into the tiny body bag he’d fashioned using one of his father’s dress socks, with the thought that his father’s feet would likely never again wear dress socks. In hours or days or maybe a week at the most, his fathers feet would cease to exist altogether. In the basement oven of the Greenwood Lake Crematorium, he imagined his fathers feet sizzling like chicken skin, bubbling into bursting flames and then burning down to the soft gray powder he’d only seen in movies.
It was a ten minute drive to the local pet shop, a big box store with fluorescent lights and wide aisles. Shoes squeaking on the polished linoleum floors, Ben made his way towards the aisle of squawking birds. Holding his father’s dress sock by the toe, he shook the feathered body into his open palm. So light, he thought again. He took a moment to consider Edward’s coloring, an act he had never done in the 10 years of ignoring him in the living room. Faded yellow body, that intensified towards the head into a bright canary yellow, topped with a near red plume, now deflated. He smiled at the deep orange circles on either cheek, a signature marking of cockatiels that made them look like they were in a perpetual state of blushing. The black glassy eyes, still open, stood in stark contrast to the airy palette of sunrise colors and Ben had the sudden urge to poke one and roll it beneath his finger like a marble. Sighing, he looked into the cockatiel cage, assured that Edwards perfect twin would be patiently waiting to return his gaze. His assumption that all cockatiels look more or less the same was, to his disappointment, proved immediately wrong. He settled on a white cockatiel, with a faint yellow head that still bore the signature near-red plume and orange blush. Good enough he thought, suddenly realizing that in all reality his father would likely never see Edward 2.0 with his own eyes, but rather be comforted by the obnoxious tweets and screeches from the comfort of his death bed.
Edward 2.0 rocked side to side on his perch in the small cage, clawed feet gripping and releasing in an anxious dance. Ben looked at his father’s dress sock sitting on the passenger seat, pregnant with the body of the dead bird. He’d always hated birds, the beady eyes, the obnoxious sounds, the poky claws and pinching beak. They were alien, hard to read, unpredictable. And now, sitting beside his father’s beloved Eddie and the imposter that would take his place in the living room, he still failed to understand why, of all the pets they’d had throughout his life, his father had bonded with the alien. He looked down at his hands and thought of how Edward would bite, hissing and clucking through that alien beak, nipping away at all fingers save his fathers. His father would offer a calloused finger as a perch, lifting Edward out of his cage, gently stroking back the red plume on his head and raise him to his face, eye-to-eye. He spoke softly, letting the alien rub its alien beak along the creases of his aging face and eventually settling him on his shoulder or sometimes the top of his head. It was one of the few times, maybe the only time, Ben had seen his father so caring and gentle. He wondered if his father had been like that with him when he was a child and wanted to believe that he had.
His sister’s suggestion to bury Edward “out back” at his parents house with the other dead pets had not sat well with him. Edward was not just another pet and he knew it. So, he drove North, up the I-5 corridor, past the city limits, gas stations and fir tree lined pit stops, the setting sun streaming in through the dirty glass of the drivers side window. As he drove, the highway opened up to farm land and golden fields of wheat, blue foothills lining the horizon. He flipped his signal and pulled to the shoulder, bringing the car to a heaving stop. Ben sat, the car still creaking and looked out the window at the swaying field beyond. This is it, he thought, this is where I’ll do it.
Carefully exiting the car he jogged around to the passenger-side and pulled the door open. He carefully picked up the dress sock and then the small bird cage. Edward 2.0 said nothing, shifting nervously from side to side. Ben began to walk, the crunch of the gravel quickly giving way to softer earth and the crackle of bending wheat stalks. He walked, the dress sock in one hand and caged-imposter in the other, both swaying to the rhythm of his steps. His shadow stretched out before him, growing ever longer as the sun sank, each step forward muffling the highway into the distance. The field was bordered by a small wooded patch, and Ben felt as if he was swimming towards land as he waded into the sea of grass. Reaching the base of one of the large oak trees he stopped and turned around, facing into the blinding setting sun. Sighing, he closed his eyes, felt the warmth on his skin and wished he’d brought a fucking shovel.
The earth was cool, and Ben couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched it. On his knees, he dug out a small grave piling the loose dirt into a tiny mound beside it. He leaned back, resting on his feet, kneeling with the sun to his back and the darkening woods ahead. Edward 2.0 looked at him with those black-balled eyes, but said nothing. Ben didn’t know why he had brought the imposter. To make him watch? No. And then, he had a terrible thought. He opened the tiny cage, but did not offer a finger for the bird to perch on, instead he slowly wrapped his hand around the tiny body, closing it suddenly with enough force to pin the wings. Edward 2.0, to his surprise did not squawk or hiss or bite, he simply stared at him with his alien gaze. Ben held the bird in front of him, flipping it onto his back and stared down at the soft feathered belly, delicate feet balled into fists. What if I buried them both? he thought. It would be so easy to just squeeze. And why shouldn’t he? God, in all his wisdom and cruelty, had taken Edward just days before he would steal his father. Just days before, Ben thought. It was a slap in the face, a divine insult from on fucking high. So why shouldn’t he just squeeze? He felt the blood run hot through his face, his grip tightening around the hollow little body. His gaze shifted, from the bird to his own hands, white knuckled and now trembling. They were his father’s hands, the thick fingers that had played with his ears in church as a boy, held his mother as they danced in the living room, gutted fish and built forts. They were the same hands that had stroked Eddie’s head each night after dinner, his father quietly lost in thought as he gazed into those alien eyes, especially near the end. “You son of a Bitch.” he said aloud and began to weep.
Ben placed Edward 2.0 back into his cage. Picking up the dress sock with both hands he cradled it, and lowered it into the shallow grave. He wanted to say something, a eulogy between him and the setting sun, but no words came. He scooped the loose earth with his father’s hands, sprinkling the dirt until the grave was filled.
Adam jerked awake, that vestigial monkey instinct pulling him from a shallow sleep into the dark of their room. His pulse raced, and then slowed, returning to a steady rhythm. WHUMP. WHUmp. whump. The blood in his temples felt thick, his ears hot. He lay still, open eyes staring to a ceiling he only half-believed was there. The dark felt muffled, the whump whump whump of his temples amplified. She stirred next to him, exhaling with a sigh, warm feet touched his leg. He froze, held his breath and waited for her to settle. These moments, these unconscious acts of affection had once been comforting, or at least welcome. The tossing and turning of his partner, had felt like sleeping acts of love: a hand placed on his back, an arm finding its way to his hip, her ass gently bumping his as she rolled over. But now, as he lay wide-eyed in the dark, listening to the beat of his own temples, he knew they were violations. Slowly, very slowly, lungs still ballooned, he retreated to his side of the bed, sliding first one leg and then the other.
Adam looked up into the muffled dark of the room, breath still held, he flexed his eyes open wide, wider, wider, opening them until they hurt. He imagined them bulging from their sockets like a looney toons character, two TV bloodshot spheres popping from his eyelids and rising from his face. He stretched his mouth open in a silent scream, lips pulled taut, wider, wider, wider, exposing pink gums to a black void. “The dark,” he thought, “that warm muffled dark”. She could have rolled over and stared straight at him as he lie there like a looney toon and she’d see nothing. She could be staring right now, this very moment, silently rising in the dark like a snake, eyelids peeled back, jaw unhinged, her own pink gums shrouded in that muffled dark. But she wasn’t. She was asleep. The curve of the mattress, the rhythm of her breathe, the angle of the sheets, the heat radiating to his side, all whispered to him that she was asleep, deep deep asleep. After 16 years of sleeping ass to ass he didn’t need the lights on to know that. It was his cartoon tonight, not hers.
Lungs burning for air, his eyes poured hot tears onto the pillow and yet he remained a looney toon frozen in bed. He imagined those bloodshot spheres elongating, telescoping towards that endless ceiling above. Higher and higher they rose, two towers of white cartoon-flesh, marbled with crimson veins whump whump whumping their way to heaven. His jaw extended ever downward, past his collar bone and ribs, stretching silently towards his feet, searching for the floor. Mouth open wide in astonishment, the astonishment that he’s here, lying in this bed, in this future, in this dark with these cartoon eyes and this cavernous mouth, waiting for that hilarious moment when his tongue will drop like a red rolled carpet and roll right over his crooked teeth. His whole body vibrated, screaming for air, for relief, for that laugh-out-loud punchline when someone yanks his red tongue like a schoolhouse projector screen and sends his cartoon-slack-jaw and bugged-out-peepers rocketing back into his face. Convulsing, suffocating, chest heaving in make-believe breaths he suddenly wished for light, wished that she could see his looney toon scream, that she could yank that red tongue, deliver the punch line, make everything snap back into place with enough force to knock his goddam teeth down his goddam throat.
Adam exhales. An audible rush of used air swirls into the room. His eyes do not rocket back into their sockets; his jaw does not slap shut. There is no punch line. He is real again, no longer the silly-putty stuff of Saturday morning cartoons. He closes his eyes, rolls to his side and thanks God for the dark.
I cherished the ride home those last six months in India. I’d wrap my dirty white bandana around my head, pull on my black $20 helmet and climb onto my rusting motorbike. The key would click into place, and the engine choke to life. I’d glide down the ramp of the parking garage, the smoothest part of my ride, and exit to the right, leaving the tech park I spent 10-13 hours per day in, typically till 1 or 2 in the morning. I would push my bike as fast as I could, which admittedly was only about 50mph with a strong wind at my back, but on the pot-holed, dusty decrepit roads of Chennai it might as well have been 100. There were dogs, cows and goats to dodge, busses 6 inches from my handle-bars, tires burning, garbage like snow drifts on the roadside, people everywhere. It felt like chaos. It felt dangerous. It felt like fucking heaven.
My 20 minute ride would end at a steel and wood gate. The night guard would appear from his shelter, hold up his hand in greeting, bobble his head and swing the heavy door open. The inside of the compound was a stark difference from the streets of my nightly ride. Contemporary concrete condos surrounded a blue lit pool pulled straight from the pages of Architectural Digest. Lush tropical foliage grew ever taller in prehistoric fashion, vibrant splashes of green and red against the whitewashed buildings. Cobblestone pathways and soft grass carpeted the grounds. The dirt was for the outside. The garbage was for the outside. This was our sanctuary, and it was beautiful.
I’d park my bike, pull off the helmet from my sweating head and quietly climb the flight of stone stairs to my condo. Unlocking the door made a distinct clunk that echoed through the concrete walls and marble floors of a lightly furnished Indian condo. There was a gray contemporary couch, with a huge mid-century lamp that dangled over a teak coffee table. The large window formed a view of the glowing pool just below. Quietly walking to the dining room, I’d pour myself a generous glass of whiskey. Drink in hand, I’d quietly open the front door, continue up the stairs to the roof and step out into the warm Indian night air. Relief. That is what I felt when I finally reached the roof: relief I had not woken my children, relief my wife was either asleep or, at the very least, did not emerge from her room, relief that I could finally have a drink. Relief that I was alone. I would look up at the stars, down at the dirty street below on one side of the white wall, and the lush paradise on the other and wonder if either mattered at all. Laying down on the cool stone tile, I’d close my eyes and wish for disaster. An earthquake, lightning, a mushroom cloud on the horizon that would baptize us all in a flash of white light. I wanted a reset, something to make it all start over. A zombie apocalypse maybe. I felt alone in a foreign land, waiting for the storm.
Hollis grips the smooth wooden armrests and lowers herself onto the worn-out seat cushion of her favorite chair. Hollis has sat here thousands, maybe tens of thousands of times in the 60 years since she’d bought the blue house on 13th street. People have come and gone, rooms rearranged, but the dining table has remained firmly fixed beneath the kitchen window. Solid oak and detailed with the decorative swirls expected of grandmother’s furniture, it has survived a house-fire and two burglaries. She sits in her chair, in her spot, and looks past the yellowing lawn to the street beyond.
Her hearing isn’t what it use to be, and in the past six months has gotten worse. She nods and smiles at neighbors wishing them good morning with relative ease, furrows her brow in concentration as she watches the lips of the checker at the grocery store, and avoids meaningful conversation when it can be avoided. Like sinking to the bottom of a pool, the sound of the world above had become muffled, isolating her in the deep of her own thoughts. This gray afternoon, as she peers through the kitchen window, she’s thinking of a weekend in 1972, when she and Eddie had camped at Paradise Valley.
It was late June and the snowy sides of Mt. Rainier had erupted with colorful wildflowers. This, this is how she’d pictured paradise she’d told Eddie. He’d nodded, smiled, bent down and touched the earth. Fifty years later she imagined Paradise hadn’t changed much, the wildflowers stuck in a groundhog’s day of Springs, blooming and dying, blooming and dying, ad nauseam. Mt. Rainier, Eddie had told her, was not a mountain at all, but a sleeping volcano– no a resting volcano. Looking at those beautiful wildflowers, on that perfect day in Paradise he’d told her the mountain they were standing on would someday explode with the power of hundreds or even thousands of atomic bombs. The very place they were standing would turn to ash, and all that lovely, vibrant color would be wiped to a dirty gray. A thing like that, she’d thought. Eddie would say a thing like that in Paradise, wouldn’t he? Standing in the garden of Eden, and Eddie only thought of the lava flowing beneath the wildflowers.
Eddie, her ‘Beloved Eddie’ is what they called him now that he was ‘Dead Eddie’. Dead Eddie. The first time she’d thought those words she’d actually mumbled them out loud. “Dead Eddie” she’d said, standing in her grandmotherly living room in her grandmotherly robe and slippers. And then again, “Dead Eddie!”, she’d chuckled. “Dead Eddie!”, she’d giggled, and the more she said it the harder it was to contain. “Dead Eddie” she’d crowed, tears streaming down that weathered, elephant-skin of a face as she laughed and gasped, gasped until she’d choked and vomited all down that grandmotherly robe. Dead Eddie.
But now, anointed by the muffled friends and family that eat her pies and drink her coffee, he is ‘Beloved Eddie’. “How she must miss her Beloved Eddie”, they say over Sunday brunch, looking at her with wrinkled foreheads of pity. “Her Beloved Eddie” they say as they pick up her wedding album, turning each page with a sigh. She smiles, nods, wrinkles her forehead and joins in their condolences. And why not? After 54 years of marriage, the least she can do is wrinkle her forehead in feigned grief when expected to do so. After 54 years of marriage that spread from black & white to color and back to sepia tones, the least she can do is to play along, to let them remember her and Dead Eddie and their marriage any fucking way they please. After 54 years of marriage that went from bliss to black & blue to red to gray, the least she can do is to wipe the vomit from her grandmotherly robe and keep their wedding album firmly fixed on the living room coffee table, firmly fixed where it goddam belongs, an everlasting testimony to her everlasting devotion to goddam Beloved Dead Eddie.
Raindrops pat the roof and ping the aluminum eves of the blue house on 13th street and Hollis has returned to the present. She grips the oak armrests on either side of her, blue-veined hands tighten as she bears down, slowly rising to a stand. She glimpses herself in the kitchen window, the faint reflection of an old woman shrouded in falling rain. Steadying herself on grandmother’s furniture she makes her way to the living room, past the blue recliner and the grandmotherly vomit stain, to the grandmotherly coffee table. She bends, lifting the thick ivory photo album from its place, holds it to her chest and carries it out to the garage.
Nothing profound today, just an old journal entry:
—
Eliana had a hard time sleeping tonight. She crept downstairs to my office, cozy in her winter fleece pajamas, already dressed for PJ Day at school tomorrow. With Jewel over her mouth she said she was having a hard time sleeping as she crawled into my lap, illuminated by the white glow of my laptop. I cradled her in my arms like a baby, rocked back and forth a bit in my office chair. Hair unbrushed, her sweet face smelled of sugar cookies. I asked if she would like me to come and be with her while she tried to sleep, she nodded and slipped off my lap. I followed her upstairs to her room as she happily climbed into bed.
I stroke her hair and kissed her forehead when suddenly she burst out laughing, her eyes squeezed towards shut with laughter, her smile wide. “Remember that time I slapped your face?! The was so funny, but I’m sure it was painful for you.” We both burst into giggles and I gave her kisses and hugs.
My sister’s house burnt down today. Not all of it, but enough to lose most everything inside. Eliana looked at me and said it was sad that the fire had ruined Gabe’s house. She was sad for his stuffed animals and the rats. “They must have burnt to dust” she said, holding her stuffed lamb close to her face and kissing its hooves. I looked at her and felt wisdom and and something meaningful, far beyond her years looking back at me. I kissed her goodnight and told her I would check on her in ten minutes to see if she had fallen asleep, “that should be long enough” she said as she rolled over and closed her eyes.
I don’t remember the entirety of the conversation or the words that were used, save one. My mother had called me in the late afternoon, almost casually, to tell me she was dying of cancer. Her voice didn’t waiver, her tone one of inconvenience with a hint of “I told you so.” There was a tension, a tension that poorly masked an emotion that betrayed her message. I recognized the approach. It was the approach used by my daughter the moment she was awarded the right to remain home, stay in in bed and watch TV all day due to a mild fever. It was suppressed glee, the masking of that inappropriate glee that bubbles just beneath the surface of getting what you want despite shitty circumstances. The alimony you don’t have to pay because your ex was cheating on you and marries as soon as the divorce papers are signed. The house you buy at a steal because the economy is collapsing. The race you can’t run because you’ve sprained your ankle. Well shit, what a crummy situation. Suppressed smile ensues.
I listened to her confused. Confused is the right word I think. When my father had told us he was dying it had been devastating. We’d been called to the house late in the evening. We all knew something was terribly wrong. He told us as we stood in the kitchen, a shocking prognosis that left him 3 months to live. One by one he held us and waited for us to cry. I tried not to, I thought I should be strong. It didn’t work. At least that’s how I remember it. It felt appropriate, all of it as it should have been. But this? What was this? Why was she telling me this like this, a suppressed smile on her thinning lips?
In the years leading up to her death my mother was obsessed with dying. We were told constantly how she would never see her grandchildren grow up. Each year would likely be the last birthday/Christmas/Easter/[insert holiday]. With a heavy sigh she would tell us she couldn’t wait for Jesus to take her, as her sweet owl-eyed husband sat beside her looking neither amused nor concerned. Before death it was illness. Back issues that crippled her through my childhood. Headaches that disabled her in the afternoons. Fatigue and fogginess eventually labeled fibromyalgia. Each ailment would stay for a few years and eventually be replaced, rather than compounding. In the last few years of her life it was dying, the ultimate ailment. The granddaddy of all ailments. The emperor of all maladies ladies and gentlemen. Death, come on down! You’ve just won a brand new mother of five who’s excited to meet you! You lucky fuck.
The call ended. I didn’t cry. I was angry. She’d gotten what she wanted. Now all of our lives would shift their lenses to focus on her. She’d gotten the part, the starring role. Finally, all of that hard work paying off in the role of a lifetime. Fire up the spotlight. Roll that camera. Action baby!
But those final days in the house were not the stuff of movies. The steep decline that brought immeasurable pain. The slurred speech. The 20 minute struggle to walk to the bathroom that resulted in a few drops, and the 20 minute struggle back to bed. The moaning that accompanied it all. Having your son carry you like a child to bed. The drugs that were never enough. The choking. The gurgling. The gasping. The fear. The want. The want to continue now that it’s the closing scene. That’s a wrap.
It was between these two moments, the call from the sick girl getting to stay home from school and the grandmother gasping her last breath, that I saw my mother. I realized she was just the sick girl who’d grown old but hadn’t grown up. And now, looking back I wish that I had played along more near the end of the movie, given my full attention. I wasn’t convinced it was the final scene. I was waiting for the twist ending, the setup for the sequel, for something that would require more of me and I didn’t know how much I had left. I wish I had allowed her all of it. The lights, the camera, the dressing room, the sequined dress, the feather boa, the fancy hat, the applause, her name in lights, those red velvet curtains. All of it.
I told her she was lovely as thunder rolled,
and rain drops patted young canvas roofs.
She cried and held me like a brother,
and I was happy to be needed.
Written August 19, 2008
I feel distant this morning. As the gray rain drips from heavy clouds and seeps its way deep into the earth, I feel the presence of an unwanted visitor. It looms in the corner of the room, watching my morning routine and follows me like a ghost through the halls of this building. I feel its hollow eyes stare into my back, longing for contact, longing for acknowledgment that I am hesitant to grant.
I catch glimpses of its shapeless form, pausing for a moment to contemplate it’s resemblance. At times it is oppressive, dark and ghoulish, mournfully wailing a silent lament that only my ears hear. It grows and shrinks like a hungry fire, rising and falling in a graceful and terrible dance. And at times it’s face is familiar and oddly comforting, like a memory that returns to consciousness after years of absence.
It is a heavy companion to bare, though weightless and floating, drifting by my side. It’s there when I awake in the morning, and when I go to bed at night. Not easily ignored but easily denied, it is patient and eager for attention. And at the days end, when I look into it’s sad empty eyes and embrace it with tearful gasps, I am overwhelmed with a loneliness that only comes from its company.
Someday my visitor will begin to fade, slowly losing solidity and distancing itself from my daily steps. We each carry our ghosts I suspect, some of us have many more than others. Throughout our lives they come and go, shrinking and growing in stature and demand, but always waiting patiently in our minds for a moment of reflection.