I am a spectacle of ghosts of whomever I was and whatever I thought myself to be. A shimmer of phantoms plays in my mind like spirits in a graveyard…darting from one gravestone to the next…bony fingers tracing the names carved into each one and the sins, real and imagined, committed against and by me are released into the ether, free to dissipate in the gathering gloom. Phantoms in the periphery taunt me, darting from place to place until I am driven to close my eyes to wipe these visions from my fractured mind.

We exist in a realm of wraiths…haunted by memories, desires, and dreams of never-transformed lives upon which we still wish from time to time. Enveloped by a stir of whispers…past conversations, first hellos, final goodbyes, I love yous, I hate yous, prayers, and pleadings. Remembrances of past lives torment and tease, excite and exhilarate while pushing me to move forward in search of a what should have been but never was. Specters draw nigh in the darkness. They offer peace through disrembrance…all that was and is, washed away in a sea of oblivion. Regrets, contentment, misery, audation, solemnity, joy, acrimony, and love, all gone in a moment if only I speak these two words…release me. The words begin to form in my throat but I freeze as the understanding of this gift becomes clear. I would lose all that has made me who I am…the good and the bad, the sorrow and the joy, the estrangement and the love…all included in the foundation of my psyche. I shake my head, sending the ghosts and specters back from whence they came. I cannot live in this evaporating void surrounded by the ghosts of what never wait. I must live in the here and now while creating a life that will keep them forever at bay. And that begins today.