ghosts

You have them in your life, these ghosts that haunt you. Shadows of ones who at some time cast themselves long and deep across the walls of your heart. Old friends, old loves.

People who have come by chance and gone by choice.

Some go too quickly. Or too easily. They leave you, suddenly lost on the road of your life, dazed and raw and full of unanswered questions. So you stand alone in this grayed-over place looking here and there for the crumbs leading home, but you, of course, just set out on the trek too careless and sure to pack them.

Of course you did.

Over the years, these are the ghosts that haunt you again and again because you were vain enough to think that, once, when you stepped across the threshold of their lives, you tread firmly enough to leave a footprint. An impression. To matter, somehow. You can retrace the path of your life and find the clear prints they left, see their shape, but you find yourself always wondering what sand storm of amnesia or apathy or chosen forgetfulness blew across their hearts and forever buried your careful steps in their lives — or the steps you thought were so solid and sure.

But maybe it was you. All you. That’s probably it, you tell yourself. Easier to believe that than anything else. Perhaps you only tiptoed across their lives. Perhaps you stumbled badly. Perhaps the balance of your heart was uneven, out of whack. Perhaps the footing of your soul had become numbed and callused and you couldn’t feel your own tracks. However it all happened, somehow the steps you thought you took were not the steps you left behind.

So these ghosts drift through your mind, lugging the burden of questions you’ve packed for them over the years. Sometimes, you dare to gather the ghosts and place them on the witness stand in your mind. You question. Prod. Beseech. But they’re non-responsive; they evade. It’s all so unsatisfying. You just can’t get to the truth of it all. And when the verdict comes in, it’s always the same. Guilty. You, not them. You sigh a long sigh and wonder why you even bother with this — the same cold courtroom of your mind. The ghosts flit away and you don’t question them again for a long while.

But you will. You know you will. And it will turn out the same as it always does.

Then a day comes when one of those ghosts escapes the shifting walls of your mind and stands real and solid before you. You see the ghost and the ghost sees you.

And, as you always feared, the ghost is not pleased to see you.

You feel a pinprick of tears as you turn away, calling that cold courtroom of your mind to order once again.