ghosts
Mikaela Kimpton
the night air smells of clementines, fresh laundry, lilac and lemons
and perhaps the whiff of a threatened skunk
and Old Spice Timber deodorant
but no longer of constant campfire
which permeated the breeze and beseeched nostrils
oh, many seasons ago, now
yet also yesterday.
i remember when the hills burned
but now the soft zephyrs alert rain
how evanescent is death and yet still subjugated by the transience of that which is living
it’s velvet 2am and the world sleeps
but i walk not alone under the fluorescent street lights
i grew up in an old haunted New England town that no one has heard of
even though it’s a mere hour away from the site of The Conjuring
(and itself frequented by many in the lively summers seeking the sparkling sea)
but winters are far longer and
i’m no stranger to things that walk at night
routine consisting of covers meticulously gathered around the pale countenance of a 7-year-old girl
like the moon swaddled in cotton sheets
as she drifts off to sleep while the house groans
but she is alone
even if her racing heart doesn’t feel like it
i didn’t face the reaper then
but i did at 12
in the form of a small frog on my ankle in the dark of the teeming depths of the dripping rainforest i
silently made peace with my life before looking calmly down
as my parents tepidly discussed real estate
i was not alone yet i was
those seconds passed like oil through honey
deafeningly quiet and electrically slow
but the universe decided it was not my time
that suffocating night
the frog was not mottled with the vibrant colors of death
the cool cascade of relief pouring down my forearms and returning feeling to my feet i
just wish i handled loss of things outside myself with the same grace
for, i mean,
how can you mourn the living?
it is in my opinion that we grieve not for our inescapable eventual loss of self as it is
— as far as we know —
not we who have to make acquaintance with it
but the affliction we bear as witnesses aware of the passing of beautiful things
Sigmund Freud once wrote in his essay ‘On Transience’:
“a flower that blossoms only for a single night
does not seem to us on that account less lovely”
though whimsically philosophical in premise it exhibits allusion
to economic statutes
of my own callously rational liberal arts discipline
constructed on neoclassical calculations
(freely but forcibly chosen)
for the psychologist claims
perhaps what renders things intrinsically beautiful
is their own inherent scarcity of existence;
is human experience just a marketplace?
is love merely a transaction?
on any account
i pirouetted that very veil several more times
though never quite as vividly
at least that i can recall
as i waltzed with ephemerality
of my own existence while still sentient to do so
but when i gazed into that midnight chasm
solely containing a countless multiplicity of swirling stars
only infinity and my reflection stared back
a hall of mirrors of the self
tossing tangerines into oblivion
on Mulholland Drive
above a City of Stars, beneath an empty sky
and i dance through Wikipedia rabbit holes of general relativity
and quantum entanglement
forever in a second and a second that lasts forever
how can that which is lost to us still keep our constant company?
perhaps it is only our curse of linearity
and self-referential perception of impermanence
or merely feverish delusion…
because now i smell embers and fresh timber and feel ambiguously familiar warmth beside me
where are the rain and lilacs?
do you believe in ghosts?
and perhaps the whiff of a threatened skunk
and Old Spice Timber deodorant
but no longer of constant campfire
which permeated the breeze and beseeched nostrils
oh, many seasons ago, now
yet also yesterday.
i remember when the hills burned
but now the soft zephyrs alert rain
how evanescent is death and yet still subjugated by the transience of that which is living
it’s velvet 2am and the world sleeps
but i walk not alone under the fluorescent street lights
i grew up in an old haunted New England town that no one has heard of
even though it’s a mere hour away from the site of The Conjuring
(and itself frequented by many in the lively summers seeking the sparkling sea)
but winters are far longer and
i’m no stranger to things that walk at night
routine consisting of covers meticulously gathered around the pale countenance of a 7-year-old girl
like the moon swaddled in cotton sheets
as she drifts off to sleep while the house groans
but she is alone
even if her racing heart doesn’t feel like it
i didn’t face the reaper then
but i did at 12
in the form of a small frog on my ankle in the dark of the teeming depths of the dripping rainforest i
silently made peace with my life before looking calmly down
as my parents tepidly discussed real estate
i was not alone yet i was
those seconds passed like oil through honey
deafeningly quiet and electrically slow
but the universe decided it was not my time
that suffocating night
the frog was not mottled with the vibrant colors of death
the cool cascade of relief pouring down my forearms and returning feeling to my feet i
just wish i handled loss of things outside myself with the same grace
for, i mean,
how can you mourn the living?
it is in my opinion that we grieve not for our inescapable eventual loss of self as it is
— as far as we know —
not we who have to make acquaintance with it
but the affliction we bear as witnesses aware of the passing of beautiful things
Sigmund Freud once wrote in his essay ‘On Transience’:
“a flower that blossoms only for a single night
does not seem to us on that account less lovely”
though whimsically philosophical in premise it exhibits allusion
to economic statutes
of my own callously rational liberal arts discipline
constructed on neoclassical calculations
(freely but forcibly chosen)
for the psychologist claims
perhaps what renders things intrinsically beautiful
is their own inherent scarcity of existence;
is human experience just a marketplace?
is love merely a transaction?
on any account
i pirouetted that very veil several more times
though never quite as vividly
at least that i can recall
as i waltzed with ephemerality
of my own existence while still sentient to do so
but when i gazed into that midnight chasm
solely containing a countless multiplicity of swirling stars
only infinity and my reflection stared back
a hall of mirrors of the self
tossing tangerines into oblivion
on Mulholland Drive
above a City of Stars, beneath an empty sky
and i dance through Wikipedia rabbit holes of general relativity
and quantum entanglement
forever in a second and a second that lasts forever
how can that which is lost to us still keep our constant company?
perhaps it is only our curse of linearity
and self-referential perception of impermanence
or merely feverish delusion…
because now i smell embers and fresh timber and feel ambiguously familiar warmth beside me
where are the rain and lilacs?
do you believe in ghosts?
Creative nonfiction prose
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Mikaela is a senior economics major at Pomona who has always been enamored with writing poetry (though should be writing her thesis).
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