One Ghost

Someone once told me that the way to rid yourself of a ghost is to spin around and around so fast that your world turns inside out, upside down and right side round. You will know that it's gone when you finally get up from the ground and look in the mirror to see nothing but a pale moonlight reflection of what you once were.

Ghosts sneak in and grab your arms from behind when you least expect it. They toss you into the melee of lost thoughts and bittersweet memories. And it's not enough to turn your world on its head; their presence is unintentionally innocent and it's hard to fault them for that.

My growing up house has just one, one small ghost. And the last time she appeared I cleaned and scrubbed and screamed and cried so hard that the house was spotless. I sanitized everything for days and days with fanatical zeal and once I finally stopped to rest only the echos of my footsteps were quietly ringing in my ears.

But she came back one day last week when I was still warm from the cradle of summer and her cold breath froze me like the icy North wind. And as I sat trapped between frozen steel and the deluge of her life's achievements poured over me freezing my bones I swore to myself that it wouldn't be the same again.

Last time I got spun round like a washing machine, emerging rubbed raw and my pink tender skin flinched at your name. But this time I vow that I'm not going to spin around in circles because there are other ways to rid yourself of a ghost. I'm going to set fire to my growing up house and the flames will be strong enough to melt an icy cage, and they'll burn hot enough to scald away hand prints on my arms, and will be beautiful enough to watch standing on mountains above it all.

The thing about ghosts you always have to remember is that they were alive at one point. And the one thing we all know, right from birth, is that ghosts can only haunt you when they're dead. But this ghost won't haunt me anymore. I'll watch it float slowly away in the smoke of my house, away and away to the North horizon.