Haunted House

They still haunt me. They are two figures that live through the memories and damage of the past, songs that repeat in my mind like a radio station that only plays the same hits

on an endlessly repeating cycle.

My station is perpetually tuned to grief.

Sometimes, the volume is low enough, almost undetectable, and I can hear the other songs of life. Optimism temporarily replaces pessimism. I can feel happiness without dread, that evil twin that diligently seeks to poison all that is beautiful and good around me. I can look to the future and see potential for fulfillment, rather than disappointment. Lust overwhelms and pulses within me, an insatiable demand for pleasure. The figures do not intrude.

But, unavoidably, the volume increases and the distorted songs of grief blast above

everything else. Triggered by conflict, happiness is replaced by anger, acceptance is replaced by anxiety, and hope is replaced by dejection. It is then that the figures, ghosts of lives that never were finally return. They are small, hollow figures with crimson eyes that gleam and taunt. It isn’t like the movies – they do not knock pictures over or leave doors ajar. They do not reside in the walls of my house. They come to me at night, appearing in the deepest reaches of my dreams. Sometimes, I don’t remember dreaming of them, and sometimes they are all I recall. Regardless, I feel them with me throughout the day, and I know that I will see them again when I return to bed.

It has been years since my second miscarriage, yet the figures are still with me. They

used to frighten me, but they have been with me for so long, I have become accustomed to their presence, even comforted by them. They do not speak. They make no demands. They want nothing of me. They are simply two individual parts of me, both etched into their own respective corners of my psyche. I only acknowledge them in writing. I do not speak of them. I do not speak to them, not even when they visit me in slumber. They live in me. They are of me. They are me.