They are pale blue phantasms, floating in the air behind her, behind all of us; like little lagging balloons pulled by fishing line into otherworldly streamers – and she seems to be the only one that can see them.
She leads one life, and the other life leads her. It’s not troublesome, that is, she wouldn’t be in trouble if one life met the other. People would probably smile, shake with laughter. Their bodies would shiver and twist like the life-ghosts which flow excited through her grasping fingers as she tries to revive someone just fallen in a heart attack, an attack of the heart upon the apathetic city pavement; she tries pulling slippery soul pieces back to the realm of cold despair they’re departing in droves.
At first she didn’t know what they were. She still doesn’t know what they are, not precisely, but there are observable patterns. Newborn babies are surrounded by brilliant spheres of light, split from the mother’s shadows which aren’t shadows. Development ensues, of the child and its invisible legion, they change form and fade and never multiply. Hospitals are beacons in her nightscape, streaks of death’s gifts to the stretched velvet sky.
She’s depressed, awfully depressed. Uncontrollable torrents of tears before tossing sleep, that sort of uncomfortable affair. Perhaps she’ll learn to deal with the normal thread of life life life death, and then sweet silent oblivion, one day soon hopefully, before her own quivering friends leave without pausing for goodbye, come back, just briefly, let me end things properly oh please, oh, oh – it’s either that, or she’ll push them out the door before they are ready to leave. She’s going to end both her lives if she doesn’t end one.
