Aren't we all mere phantoms?

A path into the dusty nooks of my home (brain)

I’m looking at my 20 drafts, left to take up storage space until I one day throw out them because I no longer remember what I wanted to say. Words that used to scramble in my head, loud and tiresome, are no longer there. Just like the scraps of paper in the drawer, my brain is covered in cobwebs.

Below are some of those 20 drafts that never became their own posts – some too short, some just ideas, some “not good enough”, and some too vulnerable to share at the time they were drafted.

Welcome to my house.

Quote from: E.M. Forster, Howards End (1910)

[Room #1]

A once lush path, now trampled by my footsteps, spirals of desperation that have left their mark. I dig my nails into the ground, looking for the root to tear up to prevent the poison from spreading further. Scraping and scraping until there’s nothing left.

This year, a physical barrier arose. Between whom, you may wonder. I am uncertain, perhaps between myself and the world, or between me and myself? Time rushes by, yet everything feels the same. Whether I say something or keep it to myself makes no difference. It’s all the same. The world keeps spinning.

Like a phantom looming, haunting the house. Narrow corridors with the light of the full moon spilling in, turning the floorboards silvery blue. Creaking with every step. Twisting and turning.

How do you know what you want, what your dreams and desires really are, and what is just an idea that someone else has given you? What do I even like? I hold no answers. I travel this world, also known as life, without a map, trying to find something that anchors me in this life. (Don’t we all?)

[Room #2]

Before me stands the shadow of a person. Or rather, a faint image of you, a mere replica. I try to grasp the loose end in an attempt to prevent everything from unravelling. The thread that weaves together a story of knowledge echoing from the walls; sunbeams streaming through my lace curtains, shadows cast by the leafy trees, ruins of the castle, scents of açai and matcha, grandmothers shaking their heads in disapproval. There, where the sky meets the sea and creates the perfect shade of blue, blending them into a velvety curtain, lie all our secrets, hopes and dreams.

[Room #3]

I have once tasted the freedom of another location but my duties brings me back to this godforsaken place, marketed as the gem of the landscape. A slice of heaven, you might even venture to say. But once back, I see people leaping across the neighbourhood with a frenzy in their eyes. The parents are sick with worry while their offsprings are tired of this place, making it their destiny to find a better home, to be better than their parents. The worst possible future for them is to stay here, in this town that turns everything into concrete squares and buries your dreams beneath the grey cement.

This town will never turn into Beacon Hills with teenagers turning into werewolves in the basement under the full moon, or into the forest where Little Red Riding Hood skips around picking berries for her grandmother. Instead, the creeks that flow through the city run deep and ominous. Its history of drownings hangs over it like a dark breath. It is said that if you stand long enough on the riverbank, the dead will rise to the surface, wrap their cold bony fingers around your wrists and pull you down below the surface with them. Here, Grandma’s baked goods are deceptive, for beneath the sugar-coated cakes lies a rotten core, a pungent taste that hits your tongue when you take a bite.

As I gaze at the landscape from the fields I once called my own, ghosts loom in every corner. Wild eyes, panicked hearts and an insatiable hunger. When my eyes meet theirs, I see people from my past. The houses remind me of what was and what could have been. I skip past the place where fights used to take place, aching with the memory of the blows I received. Looking at the houses where my old friends lived makes me think of the dreams we had together and separately, how we shared them one evening under a starry sky with crickets chirping in the background. For every constellation we could make out, we told a dream we had, transformed the dream into physical matter and sent it up to the sky in the hope that the stars would whisper it on to... I don’t know. I don’t think any of us knew. We did it because it was our way of escaping, of becoming something other than the labels the town had put on us.

I see the children of spring running towards the nearby fields. Their eyes filled with the glimmer of hope that I once had. Perhaps they too send their wishes to the stars, hoping to leave this place forever, to become something and someone else. Because the grass in the nearby fields gives them this, this hint of a possibility for something else, something bigger and better. A future determined by themselves and not by their surroundings.