leaveawhisper
04/19/10, 09:32 PM
I never had a ghost before.
I used to want one though,
Ever since I was old enough to grasp,
However inaccurately,
The romanticism of lying in bed at night
Tortured by thoughts of someone
Who hasn’t had a single thought to spare for you
And closing your eyes
In attempt to keep it all in
But having it seep out anyway,
In liquid form across your cheeks,
Until your pillow is wet
And your hair is sticking to the side of your face
And you’re oblivious to it,
Because you’ve fallen asleep.
I tried to make that happen on several occasions then—
Crying myself to sleep, I mean.
With one exception, I ran out of steam
Long before sleep overtook me,
And I was frustrated by my lack of emotional capacity.
It looks effortless in the movies.
Of course, after a cut or two,
The sleeper is standing in line for coffee--
I guess those of us who don’t like it are S.O.L.--
And her world is put right,
Either by running into Mr. If-He’s-So-Wonderful-Why-Does-He-Make-You-Cry unexpectedly
Or by running into his successor,
Mr. I-Will-Love-You-Forever-Until-I-Get-Bored,
Or by realizing,
As it is only possible to do in fiction,
That she is strong and happy without a man in her life.
Either way, the fix takes seconds
And the days on end of hard labor actually required to set right something that’s gotten so out of whack
Are carefully omitted
And not at all planned for by saps like me
Who hope to recreate that broken-instrument-made-playable-again scenario.
The reality of the situation is a lot less romantic than I would have liked to believe.
It’s been four months since we shared anything at all.
One and a half of those months were spent pretending that I might still hear something.
One and a half were spent refreshing the page,
Replaying the songs,
And reliving those moments
To make up for what I wasn’t hearing.
And the last month was spent, finally, I thought, free.
Then the ghost showed up.
What was I getting myself into,
That night when I asked the unusual guy in the kitchen
To repeat his name because I’d missed it
When he was introduced the first time?
He follows me.
I was completely unaffected before.
Now I walk around here like I’m looking for something,
Like the next corner I round will bring me face to face with him.
I see someone with blonde hair
And my ghost flits over to superimpose his image on said person
And my heart hammers
Until I get close enough that the image is dispelled
And it occurs to me that said person
Who almost made tears spring to my eyes
Looks nothing like him at all.
And what a shame that is for said person…
I listen to music which would have been genius with or without his declaring it to be so,
And my ghost whispers in my ear
That this is the medley of understanding another and being understood.
“This is what his soul sounds like…”
And I can’t listen anymore.
To the music or to my ghost.
My ghost pokes around in places he shouldn’t.
I gathered, in a cardboard box,
The pieces of those memories with him that I dissected,
And determined,
From the gruesome, yet insubstantial mess that poured out of their shells,
To have been mostly air to begin with.
I put that box outside the door
That marks the division between what I care about
And what I don’t,
And I expected that it would be whisked away by the garbage collectors
And left to decompose over time with the rest of the trash at the back of my mind.
I washed my hands of it all,
And when I turned around, there was my ghost,
Translucent with pride,
Holding out a cardboard box
With the memories inside reinflated,
As good as new.
At the first sign of my rage he dropped the box and vanished,
And I thought I was going to be okay--
That maybe he’d gotten bored,
Or that I’d gotten braver,
And so he’d given up.
Then he took over the dream controls
And I found myself in class with him,
The real him,
Being ignored for most of the semester.
In the end we were able to talk and joke,
But the majority of the REM cycle was spent
Staring at the back of his head in agony.
Who would have thought the sight of a man’s neck from behind
Could cause such pain?
The next night it happened again—
My subconscious was shoved suddenly in his direction.
I called and asked him about these past four months
In response to which he said he’d liked me--
Liked me until he’d read my sorry excuse for poetry
And detected a lack of confidence,
An utter “self-loathing.”
Then he knew he couldn’t be with me.
That was no cheerful resolution,
And the fact that there was a resolution period,
Did nothing to cheer me.
Funny that the reason,
Even in a dream,
Seems plausible.
Also funny how a person,
Just by doing nothing,
Can make you feel so insignificant,
So inhuman.
Like my ghost is.
I’m ready for that coffee shop cut now.
Or at least for his spirit to go away,
So I can mourn not being with him in peace.
I used to want one though,
Ever since I was old enough to grasp,
However inaccurately,
The romanticism of lying in bed at night
Tortured by thoughts of someone
Who hasn’t had a single thought to spare for you
And closing your eyes
In attempt to keep it all in
But having it seep out anyway,
In liquid form across your cheeks,
Until your pillow is wet
And your hair is sticking to the side of your face
And you’re oblivious to it,
Because you’ve fallen asleep.
I tried to make that happen on several occasions then—
Crying myself to sleep, I mean.
With one exception, I ran out of steam
Long before sleep overtook me,
And I was frustrated by my lack of emotional capacity.
It looks effortless in the movies.
Of course, after a cut or two,
The sleeper is standing in line for coffee--
I guess those of us who don’t like it are S.O.L.--
And her world is put right,
Either by running into Mr. If-He’s-So-Wonderful-Why-Does-He-Make-You-Cry unexpectedly
Or by running into his successor,
Mr. I-Will-Love-You-Forever-Until-I-Get-Bored,
Or by realizing,
As it is only possible to do in fiction,
That she is strong and happy without a man in her life.
Either way, the fix takes seconds
And the days on end of hard labor actually required to set right something that’s gotten so out of whack
Are carefully omitted
And not at all planned for by saps like me
Who hope to recreate that broken-instrument-made-playable-again scenario.
The reality of the situation is a lot less romantic than I would have liked to believe.
It’s been four months since we shared anything at all.
One and a half of those months were spent pretending that I might still hear something.
One and a half were spent refreshing the page,
Replaying the songs,
And reliving those moments
To make up for what I wasn’t hearing.
And the last month was spent, finally, I thought, free.
Then the ghost showed up.
What was I getting myself into,
That night when I asked the unusual guy in the kitchen
To repeat his name because I’d missed it
When he was introduced the first time?
He follows me.
I was completely unaffected before.
Now I walk around here like I’m looking for something,
Like the next corner I round will bring me face to face with him.
I see someone with blonde hair
And my ghost flits over to superimpose his image on said person
And my heart hammers
Until I get close enough that the image is dispelled
And it occurs to me that said person
Who almost made tears spring to my eyes
Looks nothing like him at all.
And what a shame that is for said person…
I listen to music which would have been genius with or without his declaring it to be so,
And my ghost whispers in my ear
That this is the medley of understanding another and being understood.
“This is what his soul sounds like…”
And I can’t listen anymore.
To the music or to my ghost.
My ghost pokes around in places he shouldn’t.
I gathered, in a cardboard box,
The pieces of those memories with him that I dissected,
And determined,
From the gruesome, yet insubstantial mess that poured out of their shells,
To have been mostly air to begin with.
I put that box outside the door
That marks the division between what I care about
And what I don’t,
And I expected that it would be whisked away by the garbage collectors
And left to decompose over time with the rest of the trash at the back of my mind.
I washed my hands of it all,
And when I turned around, there was my ghost,
Translucent with pride,
Holding out a cardboard box
With the memories inside reinflated,
As good as new.
At the first sign of my rage he dropped the box and vanished,
And I thought I was going to be okay--
That maybe he’d gotten bored,
Or that I’d gotten braver,
And so he’d given up.
Then he took over the dream controls
And I found myself in class with him,
The real him,
Being ignored for most of the semester.
In the end we were able to talk and joke,
But the majority of the REM cycle was spent
Staring at the back of his head in agony.
Who would have thought the sight of a man’s neck from behind
Could cause such pain?
The next night it happened again—
My subconscious was shoved suddenly in his direction.
I called and asked him about these past four months
In response to which he said he’d liked me--
Liked me until he’d read my sorry excuse for poetry
And detected a lack of confidence,
An utter “self-loathing.”
Then he knew he couldn’t be with me.
That was no cheerful resolution,
And the fact that there was a resolution period,
Did nothing to cheer me.
Funny that the reason,
Even in a dream,
Seems plausible.
Also funny how a person,
Just by doing nothing,
Can make you feel so insignificant,
So inhuman.
Like my ghost is.
I’m ready for that coffee shop cut now.
Or at least for his spirit to go away,
So I can mourn not being with him in peace.