mmdcxci

     I have pictures of the empty room. 

                              —Laura Moriarty

Back then, I took stock in fear and adrenaline. 

Half of the reason that changed was the $1,000 

phone bill (half yours) which you left me after paying
for well over a year and giving me absolutely no indication
that you’d disappear, and that promise that you would ensure

I was okay.  You left.  Cold. Never spoke with me again. Your
ghost/no-ghost would raise its ugly head and only I would know
its reality. Partially. Enough.  I’ve watched movies
aplenty about these things: but ghost
stories vanish, too. Or transition into 
something much more terrifying than
what they were in retrospect - into nothing; into perform-
ance?  Into a game during which I was disqualified in its early stages.

Only nobody told me.  I happily participated.

The four circles that made a square that appeared on a
nearby garage door have sort of disappeared.  It reminded

me of another death, a more real one (or is it less real?).

Boy, would I love a massage....

The show goes on, however, as it must. It must. The show.
I’ve generally encouraged such drama (yes, did you honestly think
that I didn’t know?) clutched onto intense belief systems only to
watch them dissipate like the Andromeda. These things happen, 

I know them.  Do ghosts know current events, or care that 

Donald Duck is now the Emperor of the World Federation, which were 

actually the bad guys all along. It’s a world full of surprises even for an 

old man who seemed to constantly catch falling chandeliers. And my 

existential crisis. It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist, right?. And

this is not cinema, which I do recall as a place we went to escape.
The reality of it all is Star Wars. And every night slogging alongside
the melee until morning.  Also, the paper kind of cash, which we all 

relied upon obsessively.

I’m not sure where this is coming from or why I’m even telling 

you, but for some reason it amuses me to do so.  And reminds me 

that the future is all mine, after all. Who on earth would have been 

listening to that noise? How appropriate in a world that’s mine, that

I can find no place to grab onto.  Perhaps it’s perfect that you are naught

but spirit – and a spiritless naught at that....Ooh, the spit and

slither of spiritless spirit. Do things sometimes actually work 

themselves out appropriately? If only? You were a glorious and 

tricky vacuum of spirit. A black hole through which I fell.  A trip

that will always be healing as long as life persists. 

October, which always breaks my heart never looked quite as dashing 

as it does this year, unlike the bully it was. The bully it begat.  I mean, 

relative to the infamous eleven months, which (from widening 

distances. . . past), at worst only dourly come and go. What am 

I left with? Oh, substance. I do not apologize for bringing that up.

But you’re spirit, I’m flesh. That is that. These days we learn 

that even the lifeless are tortured. A gas chamber for ephemera? 
There are many days that, for some, are neither holidays
nor birthdays. October, October, October...BOO!!  Oh I hope I 

got you again.  It always makes me remember being bowled over 

with laughter.  But I know that you are only here and never here 

simply to remind me that the joke is still and always on me. 

I know because I see only one of us.  Bowled over.