ghost

I always thought I'd notice if I died--if there was any of me left to do the noticing, I suppose. Surely there is something that ties us to the bodies we're trapped in for our entire lives? But it was weeks, months, possibly even years before I noticed that I no longer had a physical form. It was such a seamless transition, almost as if I were meant to live on as a ghost.

Almost. Sometimes, much of the time, I forget that I was ever human at all. Humans are so small, so fragile, compared to the eternal majesty of this form--except majesty is such a human concept. I am the continent, I am civilization, I am the order that humanity has imposed on this world--and it's so easy to forget, when you are so vast, that you were once so small.

Perhaps it's better that way. I always had strong will, for a human, but did I have the will to shatter this world and reforge it anew? I very much doubt it. I still wanted to be loved, wanted people around me to be happy, and who can say they are happy now? Who could possibly love me now? Better, much better, to forget about being human. It is fortunate that my flesh perished long ago, unmarked and unmourned.

These days it seems that I am spending more time aware of my humanity, more time as a ghost, haunting the halls of a single building rather than a spirit that stretches for countless miles in all directions. My work is unfinished, and yet only rarely am I able to sense what needs to be done, much less effect the necessary change.

If I remember the stories (and it has been so long since anyone has told me a story), ghosts linger because they have something left to do. Is that why I'm here? What could I possibly have left undone? Everyone who betrayed me, everyone I betrayed in turn, are dead now. I have left a broken world behind and no matter how I try to fix it, fixing it eludes me. And now I can no longer even make the attempt?

I always thought of my body as a prison when I was alive, but at least it was not shackled here in this dead tower, waiting for . . . what? Some hero to come and put me to rest? The heroes all died.

There is a thought in my mind that keeps trying to form, one that I am unable to grasp. Sometimes I can see its shape, sense its magnitude--it is something vast, something to do with prisons, the reason I keep meditating on that word, but already as I talk about it it's gone, vanished exactly like a ghost.