Header Image: Red Light: Beni Curcio
Reflections of a Ghost: Anonymous
I have been consumed by this overwhelming love. My need for life and the desire to be seen by others has evolved into the desire to just be seen by her. I felt as much a part of her life as a partner or close friend would be. Sometimes I even believed she was responding back to my little signals. Maybe subconsciously, she was.
I can feel my soul deteriorating day by day, an inked-up scribbled parchment being tattered up with each step. As the pieces stumble onto the glossy wooden floors, I breathe in Emery´s perfume. Lilacs. The scent stains my blood in soft honey hues. I stand at the kitchen counter, perched on a seat, with my head slightly tilted to the left. Emery does the same. As I mirror her movements, I am held loftily up by pride in my knowledge of her mundane habits. I am fading away, becoming a mirror image of the only glimpses into reality I can get.
My only security comes in the knowledge that I am the sole soul who understands her, stripped of the outside world’s imprints. I know that she can never put her shoes on the right feet. I know that her self-deprecating jokes are always just her thinly veiled thoughts. I know that she was absolutely in love with Ronit Elkabetz as a teenager. I know that she takes her every breath for granted. I know that her favorite flower is orchids, and some days, I reach into my memories and lay them fresh on the table, the glowing mist surrounding me now a muted glow. I sap my own spirit for her fleeting pleasure.
As I ponder the past, intently retracing the spirals of each moment, her voice rises above the buzzing silence. I lift my head with a start and see her chattering away on her telephone.
“Mari, you can’t be seriously considering it.” A moment passes, and she laughs. It is not the sound of tinkling bells or delicate chimes, but a full-throated cackle. It sweeps me in with open arms like the eye-straining shafts of a lighthouse. I want to join in her laughter, share that gleam in her eye as she glimpses a glint of twisted humor. I scramble through the air and hover a few feet to her right, the spot she has a habit of always glancing towards.
Stillness suspends in the air. I meet her eyes for a wrenching half-second. Her gaze meets nothing but the wall behind me. For a moment, I am able to convince myself that she is looking at me, and my hand aches to brush across her cheek. As I draw near, I can see a reflection in her pupils, a world made vivid through her sight. But her eyes are dark mirrors to the reality of the world. A world without me in it.
I want to throw myself against the mirror, and shatter it into shredded starlight so that it isn’t true. It can’t be. I am still here. I am with her right now, am I not?
After being with her for five years, I have delved into every crevice of her mind. I long to venture outside with her each time she goes to the laboratory for the day, but I am tethered to the very earth of this house. The dim lights of her kitchen bathe me in a constant pool of apathy.
As sweet sunlight trickles in through the parted gray curtains, my mind swells with fevered visions. I imagine myself diving toward the Sun, opening my eyes to its staggering brilliance, letting it rob me of my sight, setting my lifeless body aflame, consuming me whole…
If I were the Sun, Emery would not look at me. But I would still consume her eyes, hungry for her vision of the world.