Ghosts

They say that every living creature, every breathing being has an essence, a spirit. Christianity calls it a soul, Buddhism consciousness, Astrology energy. Across faiths and times, humans have always believed that there is more to living things than the corporeal self, the fleshy kernel that we have become so obsessed about. The earth, as environmentalists and spiritualists swear to, has a spirit - they call her Gaia. Astrology, both East and West, knows that there are energies that keep the universe in balance and all things alive receive and deliver these energies that maintain the delicate balance called life. Buddhism preaches the cyclicity of one's consciousness - a turning and returning to life and to death but always beyond the physical. Christianity hankers for the salvation of the soul.

By any other name it is called Spirit.

One needs not subscribe to religion or supernatural studies to believe in 'Spirit'. For it is as real as life itself, as the air we breathe, the skin we touch. We may not comprehend it emprically but ghosts do reside.

Ghosts. They're traces of the past, traces of history. Ghosts are spirits left behind in time that linger in familiar places. And we all leave traces in the winding way of forward history.

I know spirits exist. ghosts reside because I see the trace of you everywhere. I see no one else but you in the familiar spaces I now return to, the ground we both once tread. I see you seated quietly in the chair you so frequently rested on; I see you on the bed you found quiet and loving slumber on, the corner where your bag laid. I can almost feel you entering the room, you seated behind me. I see you in the places we used to visit, the malls we frequented, the restaurants we had simple meals at, the diners we had waffles and ice cream, the parks we sat quietly beneath the starry sky. I see your face in a young crowd that swarms past me at a busy crossing; I feel you seated beside with your hand on mine as I drive along a lonely highway.

And for a moment, you are real. For a moment I could smell you, hear the sound of your voice but as I reach out, nothing is there. Yet you linger. You are gone yet I see you everywhere... The afternoon has passed but your spirit lingers...

Ghosts. They exist.

And all I do is to live with these ghosts, hoping perhaps there will be resurrection some day.

I'd just like to know... do you see my spirit too? Or have you exorcised it?