The Haunted Ghost
The mirror seems inviting, seductive, daring me to see something beyond
my flaky mask. I look deep into my own probing eyes beyond this imposing
facade, which threatens to come apart any minute I take my eyes off it, and
beyond the lonely graveyard of my shattered dreams, I come upon a being that I
could go right through. A being with no body and no soul.
A frightening void. A ghost! So utterly vacant that my eyes had to be
fooling me. For the first time, I saw because I couldn't. Or was it otherwise?
My heart thumping so fast, it seemed to have a life of its own.
And then came the barrage of questions. Who was she, what was she doing
so deep inside of me and why of all things did I not know she was in there? And
looking through her, there was no doubt that she was here before me.
She seemed so much at home. At peace. And come storms or cyclones, she
would still be standing and they would just waltz right through her. It just
could not be otherwise.
There evidently was no place for pleasantries for she obviously knew me
inside out and looking into the hollow void, I realize any question I ask her,
I would have to answer myself.
I felt like a guest in my own body, tentative, uncertain. All my dirty
little secrets, I had buried even from myself, she knew them all. I just wished
I could curl myself tight into some dark forgotten corner.
But really, do I have a choice? I have been caught red handed. I can hide
from the whole wide world but not from her. I am naked, I realize now, always
have been. But surprised I am not embarrassed anymore.
There just wasn't anyone else there. "There is a place called 'somewhere
else'. It is where you will never reach. There is also a 'someone else', whom
you will never meet and 'another time' which you will never live to see", came
that booming voice from beyond.
"But that is all I have ever been interested in", I cry out groveling in
front of her, pleading for an iota of recognition of my wretched existence.
This wretchedness, I realize with a start, is my only asset, without which I
knew for sure the earth would cave in right under my feet and I will fall
screaming into that bottomless pit that stretches till all eternity.
Right into her mothering vastness!!! She is here right now, inside me,
around me, beyond me!!! Never has been anywhere else!! She will be here long
after I am gone.
Finally!! I am the outsider, the born, whose sole purpose in life may be
to find the ghost within him and hand her back the keys which I never had in
the first place. I never ran the show. I guess, knowing that, my soul will rest
in peace
