RE:On Ghosts - A Review

Ben said that you can’t outrun a ghost, but I don’t know much about that. To me, ghosts are meant to be outrun. They’re stuck in the past, in old songs, in ripped clothes, in unreplied to messages. They can, after all, only haunt what you cling to, and it’s hard to carry much while you’re at a full sprint, let alone a half one.

But I get scared about what I’ll do when my sides start to hurt, when I find myself carrying the weight of houses and insurance and mailbox keys and borrowed toothbrushes. And I think that that fear is something I’ve got to either ignore or embrace, it depends on the day, really.

I once knew someone who loved ghosts so much they became one. They got carried away by the wind and taken somewhere scary and unknown, and they’re still there. I don’t know what’s happened to them, but they seemed certain when they left.

I tend to be attracted to people like that, I guess. Nomads, self-shooers, the distant. I’ve always appreciated the way they can make me feel like they’re bringing me and only me close. These people always quickly become my best friends. Then, like socks in the drier, they disappear, and I’m left clinging to the memories they haunt.

Like their perfume, their goofy smile, their taste in music. It gets stuck to me like static. And I’m left full of holes filled with their electricity. Their energy.

Then I let some other wanderer come in and fill me again, impermanently, and then they go again, or maybe I do. Part of it is I get so scared about closeness that I obsess over it. And that pushes those prone to leave over the edge. Because I always want more, and we can’t have more, it weighs too much and slows our run to a jog, and then a walk, and then a crawl.

And so they abscond, like we knew one of us would. And we both take pieces, but leave holes.

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend.