Missing

I am a ghost. I am formless, void, hollow. I breathe and the breath wafts through me. I sing and hear only the wheezing of a empty dry bellows. I trace footsteps out of my bedroom, following the shapes on the golden brown wood that lead through the hall, past the tiny-white-tiled bathroom, down the steps and out the door into constant motion, cars going by at all hours, energy moving, people living and dreaming within a hair’s-breadth of me, and all I feel is slow, dull, invisible. I move, think, work, and speak in slow motion, half-time, endless loops circling around and around, tightening around me, constricting.

I do not exist.

My life lies in boxes stacked two floors beneath where I sit. Halfway in and halfway out. I know I need to set foot on the ground outside, to take ownership of the air around me and breathe it in, but I am paralyzed. Ghostly. It is easier to burrow under a comforting white softness, choking out all air and possibility, than it is to open to what might hurt.

I am afraid and I am alone.

To be fair, the days since my one-year cancer anniversary, coincidentally also the day I packed a truck with the boxes of my fragmented life and drove it 80 miles south into the golden city, have mostly been magical in ways I have been dreaming of for so long. But now as I retreat into my ghost self I can only see gray. I know that my superpower of remaking realities works both for and against me and in truth, most of the time I only see the dark side of it, the lack, the fear of not remembering anything good and letting it all slip through my fingers even as I try to hold more tightly, but right now all I feel is missing.