The Black

rain. so cold. like small whips at my face swung by a man in a yellow coat too old and dirty to show sunlight anymore. waves attack the boat like a pack of wolves, darting, biting, gnawing, retreating, repeating. in the waves i see my reflection, a ghost, already drowned in that big blue  leviathan. my body just floating in its depths, floating free and unchained. liberated from the deck beneath my feet, the comforting terrain of the beast we sail through these uncaring waters, the only thing to keep us from the depths below. the depths so deep no sunlight would go. depths so dark. so dark. 

there are mountains down there, mountains and monsters and little rocks with little fish to call them homes. big rocks with big fish to call them little rocks. bigger  fish to call the smaller big fish food, and monsters to call it all a playground, a training ground for the endless struggle of land and sea. the monsters will battle and kill and win and live to fight and kill to die and these wars between the krakens, the serpents, the behemoths and titans of the sea. they clash with such bloodlust and splendor that the blows carry to the surface and release tidal forces unseen. 

diving. deeper and deeper, blue, purple, midnight black. soul crushing void surrounding, so open, so empty, so oppressing, so tight. i am flying, i see stars, i am a satellite through this expanse, my radar picks up nothing. blip. something. something close. blip blip. things. close things.  curled in a ball i am an asteroid, hurling through this darkness, i want to escape. every direction is darker, there is no north, there is no up. there is no trail of soggy bread crumbs. there is no expanse. there is a chasm, the walls are close and cold. they cannot be seen, they cannot be felt. they just are. the longer i look out into that black the closer they get, and the smaller i make myself the smaller i must stay. if i stretch out a finger, an arm, a toe, i will collide with something, or something will collide with me. i will be sent off course, careening into the walls of this underwater canyon, forever bouncing from sharp stone to sharp stone, ever falling downwards. or upwards? there is no bottom. i do not know which way bottom is, there is no top. there is nowhere that i came from, there is nowhere that i go. i am just hurling through black, and the black is crushing.

I believe in ghosts.

I believe in ghosts. 

This seems like an absurd thing to say, but maybe that's because of the normal understanding of the word- ghost. What is it that I believe in? Spirits of past relatives haunting old houses, slamming shutters, and making floorboards creak as they walk their otherworldly bodies down lonely halls? No. I believe in ghosts less complicated than that, ghosts which are not tied to the event of death, ones which do not inherently defy the finality of crossing over to... where? Maybe your ghosts can tell you, but not mine. My ghosts are shadows, they are wakes, they are lingering scents, footprints, ripples, and bruises. They are as real as anything, so real that most may not consider them ghosts at all, but their nature is, in fact, quite paranormal in that normal is much less so than it may seem.

Look up at the moon, look beyond it to the stars, see the faint stain of the milky way in the sky. They are all ghosts. Some are already dead, imploded, supernova'd, smote, gone. We still see them today, and likely will for years to come, their ghosts haunting our campfire stories and moonlit bike rides. Others still hang where you see them, burning, smoldering, consuming, dying. They may be there in that moment, but we see them then, ago, before now, their previous days. We are watched by ghosts of both the dead and the living. We map constellations, guide ships, and predict cosmic events with the help of these ghosts.

My ghosts are not all celestial though, my ghosts are much closer to home and to you than may be comfortable. While the footprint may be a ghost of the woman who walked there hours or days before, it could also have been from only seconds ago. The ripple could be the ghost of a single drop of rain. These ghosts are easy to see, we know them as effects and so know they must have come from an act, the act of which would be the projector of the ghost. There are more immediate acts though, ones we do not see as effects, and so do not perceive as ghostly at all.

Though your eyes may be open, movements noticed by them have already happened, or have begun to happen. There is a distance between all things, and distance of any measure takes time to travel at any speed. By the time light reflected from someone's eyes into your shows them to blink, by the time it is noticed they have already begun. They will also have ended before it is perceived.  These are my ghosts. A moment before someone holds your hand, they are already holding you. A moment before they let go, they already have. Everyone has a ghost, these ghosts are our physical bodies, not the ethereal transparent floating dead people we learn them to be. We are directors, writing and directing our ghosts through our entire lives. When we say "speak" a moment later our ghost will speak, and a moment later we will hear the words spoken.