I’m Just a Ghost

Not All There

I’m just a ghost in this house.  I’m not seen nor spoken to except on occasions when I make a great effort.  My actions have no effect, my words have no sounds.  Silent, my essence drifts through the day, seen in glimpses by those who live here.  No one speaks unless they need, no one touches, no one acknowledges.  When I speak I am cut off.  I am not heard.

My efforts are fruitless here.  If I pick up, things go right back where they were before.  Move and organize and when I turn around, things have not changed.  Clean and it becomes dirty.  Ask for things to be done, I am not heard.  In fact I am not perceived unless I begin to feel great anger or am needed for some purpose.  Then I am summoned.

“Can you babysit when I go out of town for the weekend?”  “Can you pick the boy up from school?”  “Can you put this on the calendar?”

Then I am invisible again.

Like a ghost, I seem to exist more firmly through electronic devices.  I am heard on the phone, texting, using the computer.  In order to communicate, even within the house, phoning is the way to be heard.  And children see me when adults don’t.  I am the “invisible playmate”.   I am a poltergeist.

I feel myself fading.  No longer a person, I am merely a shade, tied to this structure until I am exorcised.  Or perhaps until it is destroyed.  Will I be released?  Maybe by death, but if I’m a ghost, aren’t I dead already?