Franny Choi describes a ghost as “the outline of silence” in their book Soft Science. The outline brings your attention to the borders of something you ordinarily cannot see. Gives it form, boundaries between what is the thing and what isn’t the thing. This is the ghost. This is the hallway.
When you dissolve the lines/boundaries from all forms, you wake up. When they return, you have forgotten.
I stare at the wall until the boundaries blur.
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Silence is an absence. I asked myself how much longer I could endure it from you. I so desperately wanted to punish you for it. Is it okay to try to fix it one more time? My therapist says, let's examine how that worked out for you the last time, and the time before that. My friend says, “I can’t bring myself to call you stupid (for wanting to), but…”
So that’s 1 vote yes (me), 2 votes no. For now, I put my trust in the majority vote (a more reliable anchor than my self-will).
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I’ve been living in two words and waiting for the “right” one to devour the other, but it doesn’t work like that. I can’t remember a time where I felt this alive.