Things at the old summer home found me exactly where they’d been left; apparently standing, holding up normally, comfortable in the countryside dust. But it was a facade, it seems they’ve been waiting for a chance to go haywire, into a full blown confession, of a backstory, a type of narrative where realities pretend to be fictions.
The glow from a side lamp in the living room jitters like a sugar low, as I try to read my book. The afternoon wind laments something, from a funnel in the stained, brick fireplace; a heavy picture frame suddenly comes crashing down from it’s place on the wall, shards like icicles spread across the rug; cracking, snapping sounds from above, I imagine fissures opening up like fault lines across the roof. Ants parade along the kitchen counter at the mere hint of a crumb. In they come by way of what sound like hollow tile fixtures, when I knock about the surface. Consumed entrails, maladies, in the succession of country nights, and now the opportunity to confess, say out loud what’s been lurking around all these years. Through me they wish to express, maybe, the after thoughts of our family’s ways. Key words still mingling from past conversations, projections masquerading all our ancestral fears.
Ghosts come trooping in night after night, they demand to be heard, they hold us accountable for all that’s been neglected.
A purge, whether we’re ready or not, because all of us must move along towards our natural outcome when ghosts take lead. Control dilutes like moonlight on the dented shades of the hallway, and I cannot have but an inkling now, when the nightly haze is stronger than even desire. Maybe our plans belong to a breadth of time already expired. I ask, pray, to be allowed to be able now, skilled, capable of sitting with any type of ghost. Fully present to witness, like a priest at the confessional, a dim aromatic corner where a mind must be sober, subordinate to the heart. Only my ear to the voices, detecting the true beats behind the chaos, the rhythmic, orderly patterns of higher love. I ask to see the underpinning, without the need of sight, just sound, key words and the breath, to its very end, just before our next inhale.