A Ghost Story


You enter the world the same way far too many of us leave it; kicking and screaming and covered in blood. The doctors will tell your mother later you caused something called a hemorrhage and that’s why her eye color is always different now – her warm green eyes dimmed and drained until nothing but a grey fog remained.

 

You don’t latch – you never will. To anything really. Towns, states, countries, relationships, jobs; each a constantly moving train running past your station. Bags packed to go anywhere but where you need to be.

 

In fact. The one thing you could never quite be rid of is the one thing you could never quite place as being there – me. You don’t know I’m here. Not really. But you have felt me, haven’t you?

 

In the hush before your dreams. Between the steady tick and tock of the clock, and in the way the moonlight cutting through your window bends around my shadow just ever so. Up in the corner, where the ceiling meets the wall, where the dust collects in quiet reverence – this is where you feel me most. Watching. Waiting. Not for anything in particular – just for you.

 

There was a tension at first. You once thought I was something to fear. Remember the way your eyes would dart to the ceiling, how you pulled the blankets over your head, squeezing your eyes shut so tight praying for the monsters to go away. But I didn’t. I will be. And there is nothing to be afraid of.

 

Tonight, your breath is slow, steady, the weight of sleep pressing you deep into the mattress. Your arms are curled around that stuffed rabbit, the same way you have since you were small enough to fit inside a bread basket. The world is quiet. Safe.

 

And I am part of that quiet.