I don’t remember how I died
Or who was there, or where it was
I don’t recall a sudden traumatic moment
Or blinding light at the end of a tunnel
There was no obituary to check or confirm the details
But I remember what it was like to be a ghost;
To view a Technicolour world in monochrome,
To listen to life from underwater
There is something unfathomable about being a phantom with no recollection of your own demise
Unaware of your spectral state
You watch your friends and family mourn
Blind to your continued existence
Deaf to your anguished cries of
They speak eulogies you don’t believe about the woman you used to be
With no memory of how you arrived and no idea how to return
You settle into the role of an ethereal spectator
A living death is, at least, living.
I don’t remember how I came back to life
Or who was there, or where it was
I don’t recall an electric shock
Or a flatline becoming a rhythm
You’d think, miracle like that, there’d be a headline to confirm and check the details
But I remember, day by day the colours creeping back
The noises separate and one day, your best friend holds you
Tighter than you thought was possible and whispers
“It’s good to have you home”,
and you finally recognize how far you’d drifted
There are days when I miss being a ghost,
When the world is too bright, or too loud
Because when all there is is emptiness there’s no room for anything else
And I miss the security of being hollow
But, fuck, there are seven different colours in the rainbow, with a thousand shades between
And raspberries taste of fireworks instead of failure
There’s discrepancy between your best friend’s laugh and a newborn’s cry
And the rain feels like an inconvenience:
But at least it feels like something.
A living death is not, at all, living
We will all be ghosts one day anyway.
jbbartram-illu
stormborns
kianamaiart
titsay
dededos
2087
theartofmadeline
andulkaphoto
