What does it mean to die?
What does it mean when the living die inside your life?
What does it mean when you die inside the life of others?
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Isn’t it strange -
how the living vanish quicker than the perished,
how the living go faster than the dead are buried.
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So is it ghosting,
to disappear from the already gone?
Or is it mercy,
to mirror their vanishing?
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We observe different stages,
from purpose to phantoms.
Some deserve the curtain drawn.
A ghost raised, a glass raised with it.
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We’re all led by ghosts anyway -
Banquo at the banquet,
Jacob Marley rattling chains in our chests,
ancestors whispering orders we pretend
we thought of ourselves.
Tell me then,
when I sketch these lines,
is it ghostwriting or soul writing?
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With that, I chase ghosts the way
others chase gods -
their words confined,
their deaths defined,
their meaning refined
more than the living who stutter through excuses.
A ghost of a chance is still a chance,
so I follow it,
even if the trail is mist.
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Sometimes we eat from places that don’t exist,
meals made by hands we’ll never see -
isn’t that what most relationships taste like?
A ledger of vanishings,
fabricated menus,
a phone no one ever picks up.
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So if you see me fading,
if you call and I don’t call back,
don’t say I ghosted you.
Say I joined the holy ghosts -
the dreamers and rebels,
the saints and skeptics -
the only ones who ever gave me life.