I am silenced by my mere existence.
How does a person gain a voice when they have so little an audience to hear.
when nobody is there to listen.
Am I even a person?
A woman is here. She sits in the middle. Brows furrowed, corners of her mouth ever so slightly downturned.
She thinks.
Defening.
The room echos with thoughts, none with enough meaning to drown the others.
She sits unaware.
She doesnt know her thoughts can be heard.
Not by the ghost who sits opposite to her. She isnt aware she is there. Not close enough to see her.
Physically.
Mentally.
They sit in silence. The woman thinks.
No words pass between them. The ghost stares, eyes boarding uncomfortably into the wall that lays behind, and yet the woman doesnt shift. She cant see. She moves her hands. Palms cover eyes, pressure consuming the light until darkness is all that is known. Avoiding.
The ghost hears every insignificant, plotting, thought.
And then she speaks.
The woman speaks of a presence, one that chills her spine, one that unnerves her every action, one that doesn’t appreciate the life the woman gives to her.
The presence of the ghost.
A ghost only alive through the woman.
She shames the presence, unaware of the one she gives back, equally as unnerving, equally as unappreciative.
Unaware of the effects it has on future to come.
The ghost no longer exists, not physically, instead she haunts the memories of time. She looks at the woman and sees fragments of herself. Yet she stays silent.
And the woman still speaks.
The ghost remembers times of happiness, times of joy, but she also remembers times of despite, times of solid, angry, frustration.
Because the woman only ever saw a ghost, and ghosts cant feel when they’re already dead. So she spoke anyway.
And the ghost was alive.
And the ghost felt.
And she didn’t deserve it.
I don’t deserve it.
Now the woman was no longer a woman but a mother, my mother.
I look at you from my position on the couch.
And you will be thinking of yourself.
And I will be thinking of me.
But I can hear you thinking, and I will listen, and I will tell you im sorry.
I will try to make up for it.
And you wont trust me, because its not enough.
How does one satisfy the urge to kill someone when you already deem them deceased.
How do you kill someone you see yourself more powerful than?
Is it lack of care?
Interest?
Acknowledgement.
Im a ghost.
You cant trust me.
Because to you I am nothing.
Nothing but a presence to blame your actions on.
You are the actions of the ghost.
But you don’t see it.
You never do.