Ghost in the Machine

Sueño No. 2

My dearest Maggie, 

Oh, how I’m glad to hear from you. Your time abroad appears to be a master class in the joys of the mundane. Your writing reminds me of how much beauty life holds in its everyday permutations. Maggie, I can’t express how delighted I am to hear of your happiness. Perhaps it’s a bit foolish to think, but I genuinely think that the best things in life happen again and again. We must simply wait for them to call for our name and present ourselves. You have done just that.

Much like you, I’ve struggled to write this letter to you. My words failed to narrate a cohesive story. You’ll find below a series of writing addressed to you, yet never arrived in your inbox. I, of course, only include fragments of those texts. I’ve edited them and arranged them in a non-linear fashion. They are incomplete and may read as confusing. But epistolary is a peek into a specific moment, and I present a sampling of the past few months. I am elusively earnest, I admit. These are ghosts that have haunted me for a while. I must name them and allow them to take up space if I am to be rid of them. Or maybe not - perhaps I am to sit with them and chat with them. Ask them what they need and live with them.

---

* * * 

I’ve always believed that home isn’t a place; home is where your heart is. And the fact of the matter is that my heart is all over the world. It’s in places near and far, places I’ve been and not been. The more you love, the more your heart fragments and geometrizes home across space. These plot points orient and tether you to a web of fantastical connections. And to access different parts of you, to come home to yourself, requires you to call upon this web. 

And, yet, this diasporic attitude towards home has partially misguided me. Maggie, moving here has left me with little to no mirrors to see myself in. There are parts of me I’ve lost moving here. 

---

* * * 

Lately, I’ve been muttering to myself, “I wait for you and decay.” I keep on waiting for the perfect thing, but if I keep on waiting for perfection, I’ll die without even trying. It’s an asymptotic death. 

---

* * * 

Ghosting is such a peculiar phrase: to leave without explanation. It suggests some sort of apparition—a haunting. Almost as if this person has something to settle with us. But it’s us, waiting behind a screen, for a text, a call //anything// to come through. 

Wishing screen transposes into skin, almost as if I could touch your face through my phone.

---

* * * 

I mourn
how love 
bloomed for me

With me I 
will carry him, 
the ghost with no death,
until I rest 
for centuries

My love fossilized  
Rose in amber

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* * * 

it is autumn here in this ghost town. i open up the window to hear sounds of people and instead hear the rain. under the specter of a moonlight kiss i bake a loaf of pumpkin chocolate chip bread.

i’ve found a home in the kitchen

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* * * 

The uncomplicated kindness of strangers has saved me here. Perhaps it’s just the miracle of coincidence we’re all here together in this particular place at this exact time within the infinite matrix of possible realities. I still remain so grateful.

And visits from old friends unlock parts of me I thought I lost long ago. I am reminded that I bring laughter; when I laugh, my belly laughs and I fill the room. 

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* * * 

What luck I have that I can chronicle my moments and desires with you. To be able to dream up new mythologies and histories and timelines. Maggie, what do you hope the New Year brings? I pray for a visit from you.  

Sending you my love across mountains and seas,

Abner

I thought minions were immortal?