An open letter to ghosts

Dear Ghosts,

This feels strange. Since I blame every kind of distorted reality at the way the brain works or laws of physics that we’re yet to simplify. I even secretly believe that pain and love are results of temporal lobe epilepsy.



So it took me a while to figure out how to explain this letter to myself. The topic of establishing the principles involved in writing this had to be enumerated.[break]



Writing open letters is fun. I write it to my parent’s furniture and moles on my boyfriend’s body all the time. But writing to one’s ghosts is a tricky one.



Nevertheless, I thought writing to the ghosts would be a better idea than folding laundry tonight. I’m hoping to find closure here. Because life gets terribly dull without visible fences and edges. After all, the fury in enjoying life is breaking the rules that define its parameters.



I even get to address my prerogatives. Because when you write a letter, you either engage in the second-person dialogue or the first-person. Here I can, without guilt, indulge: in I, me and mine. So, all my peachy red anxieties and neon-stained sins have culminated here, in these words. The pretext of this liberty I’m taking to type a letter out is reinventing sanity; sweet, moist, pulsating sanity. The sadistic romantic in me decided to call on you to all the sun-kissed or wind-lipped ghosts from summers and winters that I lived with ages ago.



I wonder if the conversations that we might have had with other people,where we reveal our thoughts and secrets, are floating aimlessly in space. I hope the ghosts of those conversations aren’t spinning around without a master or a planet to gravitate towards. Do they haunt other people? Or do they just haunt the witnesses?







Illustration: Sworup Nhasiju



So, those of you who haunt me in between naps and walks, you must pay close attention. You can’t live like this. You can’t arrive at the doorstep of my memory and dance, demanding attention. You should try to remember each and every moment we pretended to be profound. You must remember every night we thought about death and clasped each other to assure a life of bliss. You must remember that your lies and mine have now transpired into a story that’ll forever move us, when we look back. You must stab the absence with a new crust. You must take up the weapons and show me what it’s to be without. For I’m happy without the weight of your being in my life.



I think it’s time you stopped playing games with me. I dreamt about you last week. We were both running to find some source of water. It was urgency in our search that made me sweat and wake up grappling the night’s thin air. I found my pillow wet with tears and my heart hurt.



I tried hard to salvage the dream. But I only remember the torrid rush; my body was on fire with hurrying flames. The air was quickly turning into dust and the whole forest was lighting up. However, I recall total absence of fear. Maybe because you were also burning.



I dare say that this letter would ever reach you. I couldn’t make myself see you reading in your pajamas or maybe even a dhoti. But tonight I had decided that in the light of the events surrounding me immediately, I would make this happen. That is, to reach out to you.



I’m glad I did. Because while arranging my thoughts, I’ve come to understand what etched me to get here while baring my chest and dirty toenails as a sacrificial circus.



I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason nostalgia is so painful and beautiful is because we’re constantly trying to stay in the coffins of failed love affairs and friendships. We like to live in self-confined arrangements. It’s easier to live in a box than live off wild berries in the jungle. Uncertainty does scare us. Thus, embracing familiar ghosts like you are invited to haunt us.



But there’s so much to life than holding on to things. With hearts or limbs clasped to things, we restrict movement. Motion is a beautiful landscape. It’s true to say that the process of slowly undressing each layer of your fear and lose is to set yourself free.



And Dear Ghosts, today I have set myself free. I hope you will always live in a happy place.



With affection,

Miss Lust



The writer can be contacted at sneezestar@gmail.com. You can follow her on Twitter @sneezestar

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