“The labor of being human is bearing one another’s ghosts. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, so we gather our losses into elevators and shoot up to the top floor, where we survey the city and they say whatever we want them to.” ……….Thomas Page McBee
Dear Pen Pal,
I traveled into February and saw what you gave me. Thank you for the letter and the smear of pie. Thank you for the measurements which you spent 11 months calculating, allowing you to understand the distance between your ghosts and mine. Funny how many replicas of panic exist in people’s bodies. How many do we share and have you ever thought about covering them in glow-in-the-dark glitter. Maybe we can refurbish our ghosts into giant disco balls. We would no longer fear them. Instead, they’d cause us to remember how to dance and look around. And smile. I think my ghost might even ask you to waltz. Or twirl like lightning bugs. My ghosts are growing faint. All the neon in your body has caused all the rest of me to glow and forget all about the haunt(s) of what once was. And used to be.
Aimee Herman 