exploder

“wouldn’t it be great if we could watch a star explode?”

it was just like her to say that. the violence of another world’s ending was, to her, poetic. if our own sun exploded, i’d bet she’d open up her arms to embrace it.

“i don’t know that i’d want to be that close,” i said.

“that’s the cool part. you wouldn’t have to be.” 

but she still didn’t think we were close enough.

that’s how we always ended up like this, sitting in a car, driving to nowhere, with nothing but the sound of the tires on the highway, the mp3 player shuffling our medicine, and the company of the stars above us. she couldn’t sit still long enough to color in the details, so we never did. we just kept driving.

she leaned back in the passenger seat and kicked her feet up, staring at the ceiling of the car as if it wasn’t there.

“when stars exploded a long time ago, they painted pictures of them and wondered if the gods were looking down on them. what do you think we’ll do when we get to see one?”

“take a selfie with it in the background.”

she shot me an expression i was all too familiar with. it said i have no imagination.

i was still trying to decide if we were living in a fairy tale or a tragedy. could it be both?

maybe we were better off just hoping it wouldn’t end, but the sound of the highway underneath us always struck me as the soundtrack to us, barely touching the ground, always moving faster, faster, hoping that someday, we might fly.

the thing about going up, though, is we would eventually have to come back down and i already knew she thought supernovae were poetic.

ghost

the long road home

it’s still there even when i don’t give it a voice, but i’ve stopped checking off boxes on my to-do lists. mostly because i’m too tired to even bother with coordinating my feet to take me to the other side of the room. hell, i’m lying in this bed trying to convince my mind to remember which muscles it takes to jumpstart my heart. f*ck all that rise and shine stuff. i’m doing all i can not to sink into sleep’s dark embrace again.

everything is fried. 

if we run on batteries, i’m beginning to think mine died because even recharging isn’t getting the job done lately. i’d much prefer running on gasoline and guzzling energy drinks to carry me through this empty wednesday. but, i mean, i never liked the taste so i guess that one’s out. i’ll just have to gut it out again. 

seven weeks.  

ghost

love letters i’ll never send #9

maybe one day you’ll ask me why i never write about you. i’ll say something uncharacteristically clevor like, “because there’s never going to be another person quite like you.”  

the truth is i’m not that talented a writer. no amount of cleverly placed adjectives or descriptive prose are going to be able to recreate a smile like yours or the way you laugh or hum when you’re happy. there aren’t enough words to describe the way you idly kiss my head when you’re sitting on the counter top and you ambush me by wrapping your legs around me while i try to cook, like it’s a habit you’ve formed and you can no longer help yourself. as if i was made for no other reason than for your lips to have a place to rest on my bald head. there’s no amount of thought i can translate to a page that will communicate how right it feels when your arms are pulling me tightly to you. 

maybe one day i’ll realize how wrong everything i ever felt before was until i met you.

ghost

pen to the page because it’s all a part of me

dishwater memories and dust stained disdain like stories old as time told by drunken lips, where truth slips, drips, and i drown way down in it. gasping, grasping at dead dreams, it seems the seams are coming apart stitch by sloppy stitch, revealing my oh so broken heart. 

i’m becoming a sap in my old age and i cry much easier than i used to. things are so quiet now and now it’s just me. it is what it is, so let it be.

ghost

love letters i’ll never send #8

I remember sitting in the passenger seat of your car, watching the familiar city streets flick by, fast like a picture book. It felt like there was something I was missing between the pages and second story houses, but I couldn’t place it. I wasn’t sure what to do with my arms so I wrapped them tight around my middle, holding my insides inside. I was afraid as the moments passed I might let their contents spill out all over your pristine interior. You wouldn’t look at me, but you kept talking. For the first time ever, I wished you would stop. You were telling me that you could never love me and I was completely aware that I had already foolishly followed you in too deep.

You were letting me know in your own weird way that you had been drowning for years, that you could make me no promises other than to take me under with you. You didn’t know how to love with a broken heart and you were afraid you’d break mine instead. Neither of us were equipped to breathe underwater because our evolution fell short of this.

Sitting in your passenger seat, hunched over with my secrets nearly spewing from my lips, I wanted nothing more than to be more evolved. I wanted to learn how to love without losing. I just wanted to learn how to unlive both our pasts. Hell, I just wanted you to learn to love me. I was sure you could.

Looking back, I think maybe you did love me and maybe the only way you could show it was by cutting me loose.

Maybe.

Ghost

gulf

i live somewhere in the dull ache between appreciated and wanted. a gulf as wide as the divide between kissing and being kissed.

i wish to be a wish, desired and adored. all i ask is for you to become acquainted with me on a deep, intimate level while i resist and obstruct your every attempt to do so. 

gho s  t

advice.

one of my students was working on an assignment for his classes and he asked me to help him come up with some advice from a senior to an incoming freshman. we came up with something cliche and shallow, but the question stuck with me. what advice would i, a veteran of the wars at this point, give to a younger man starting out? if i listen to the pervading themes i see in society, following our passion will lead us to happiness. what i’ve found, though, is phrases like “follow your passion” and words like “happiness” are band aids to cover up a much deeper yearning.

passion is temporary and feels kinda self centered. it’s all about what life can give me. ask any married couple who’ve been together for a while. passion only carries us so far. i think it’s better to ask myself, what is my purpose? purpose, think, is rooted in values and is more about what i can give to life, to others.

chasing happiness seems to be another trap. of course, we like to be happy, but happiness is fleeting. if we are lucky we can snatch moments of happiness. personally, i have learned to enjoy moments, a good snippet of conversation, the laughter of my children, the approval of a strange neighborhood dog. happiness is not my goal. instead, i’m finding joy and contentment as a byproduct of life lived according to my values, though i will admit, it took me a long time to develop a clear understanding of what those are. 

better late than never, right?

ghost

fan mail

over a thousand letters have found their way into the pulsating heart of my inbox. The typical fare, “i love your stories,” or “if you ever kill such and such character, i will never read another of your books.” spoiler alert. she’s under the knife in the current story. i laugh and send replies, just happy someone is reading my work. after a few days, the letters and their writers are forgotten as my mind is filled with the debris of recent or upcoming days.

not you, though.

you carried me away saying, “i use your words to fill the empty spaces of my universe.”

and then proceeded to supply pictures of your new tattoo where you wear them like winding vines along your limbs.

“i will wear your voice and i will sing your words to the trees,” you said, and i felt slender spider fingers dancing across my neck and down my battered spine, gently probing places i didn’t realize needed touching.


gh(o)st

ordinary every day magic

you know what i love?

i love taking a vision inside my head of something that does not yet exist, and by stringing together words, bringing it from my imagination and pushing it into yours.

that feels like magic. or telepathy. or some beautifully odd blend of the two.

see, there’s no end to ways to string these words together, and each different way has a different effect on me. alliterative turns-of-phrase make me appreciate language all over again. pithy statements can make me laugh. gut-wrenching reveals make me cry.

i write for me, after all, tugging at my own heartstrings without saying a word out loud.

i’m not looking to change a life, though if i did that might make all the difference. these books and these characters and even this ghostspace has definitely saved my life more than once.

in an effort not to waste what God gave me, i’ve been reaching for that brass ring, but sometimes i wonder if it is meant to be. if it isn’t, i’ll write anyway. some might say i am obsessed with the ordinary magic in all these words.

plus, there’s a rare and beautiful faith in action.

ghost

i am…

i’m a walking, talking universe of literary characters who tattoo their prose into my flesh with ghostly, keyboard fingers. i live and breathe their worldly disasters like a drug addiction i’ve never had. drowning in their scribbles, i kiss their battlefield romances, envy their brash heroics, and carry their hearts within my own.

i’m 6am coffee on saturday mornings and a half exhausted, creative whirlwind waiting to happen late on a weeknight, hunting for more than weak words and another tongue-tied cliché.

i’m a writer, mother*cker, and powerful beyond measure.

ghost