listening: soft sursurring of co-workers on a Friday afternoon

Thinking about: screaming, or maybe just ghosts.

There are dead people who don't quite leave this existence alone and then there are ghosts.

Ghosts move inside. They bring back a memory, a scent, the skin remembers pressur and heat or a cool touch.

Insides clutch at themselves and the mind does not catch this risen memory, one only catches on after the wave has crashed.

A feeling rises from within, breath catches, the heart beats harder, muscles tense, tear ducts fill and sadness rules for a fraction of a second.

Ghosts live inside, scrabbling to be heard. It isn't known how or when they rise, sometimes at night, sometimes in the day, during a flight of fancy. One returns to one's present existence with no memory, only feeling, loss and sadness roiling within.

It's nothing, it's just a memory, it's not important. But they grab at the day, they hold onto the ears and fill them, a tight chest fearfully expells air and teeth grit rather than allow a scream to escape.

The scream rises like a tide, bringing to surface old thoughts and forgotten regrets, until it has ascended from the abdomen, squeezed through the throat and pushes at the face, eyes, ears, hair.

Hands are found gripping armrests, air is sucked in as the concious thought forces muscles to relax and place the hands back at the keyboard.

The wave's crash erased all sign of the trail that may explain where the ghost came from. It has fled as conciousness flooded inside with its light.

I sit inside, silent, naked and wet and try not to cry.