Apparition

I'm thinking about the hypothetical visceral logistics of being a ghost. What would it be like? Would you feel like you still had a body? Or would it be more like occasional sudden abilities to touch and see things and feel the presence of yourself as a physical being? Hearing whispers filter through from the living like you're underwater. Walking through walls and suddenly, momentarily, feeling them press against you. Sensory static. Lights going through you, but stuttering and catching at you, because you're still there. Still a body. Just not like you were.

And when the light catches you, it's you who scatters, morphs, bends around corners and stretches in waves and ripples. The limits of your living body fall away as the sensations do. Your thoughts get stuck, made into shapes hanging on coat hooks. You stick to footprints. Your heart is in the curtains.

In this way I think there is ghostliness in our lives and living bodies. Sensations dim and fade with fluttering consciousness and awareness of our senses. Like how you can be struck with a sudden feeling of being alive, even though you know all the time that you are living.

Sometimes I feel too aware of my body and all its coordination. There are so many sensations all at once and the consciousness of it all makes me feel like a wave oscillating. If I was a ghost behind a curtain, maybe I would feel more solid, because even now in my body I feel like a system of vapour. A blowing curtain. An apparition.