Anyone's Ghost

by August Thompson

I had no interest in doing. I was almost completely defeated by simply being.

As we slew hours at the hardware store, as we drove to different lakes, wearing all black and never swimming, as we ripped spliff after spliff, as we waited for specific riffs in favorite songs, I fell in love with the act of learning someone.

Though I understood the commanding effects of loneliness, I had to believe that there was some inner evolution that all adults went through at some point that would free me. I couldn’t comprehend staying in the depths of isolation for another seven decades. I had to believe that I would one day breach and turn, finding my way to air and sun when I needed.

I knew I could never be an artist, but Jake was confident he would make something, “just one thing,” that would have value. That would outlive him. But I wasn’t allowed to hear it. No one was.

I was a quitter, but an excellent one. That, in and of itself, felt like a form of perseverance.

I didn’t feel nervous or even that sad. This was how everyone I knew talked eventually. For a while, I assumed the species was depressive. But then I realized depressives attract each other, that we can’t help it, that there’s some blue magnetism that pulls us.

There was a question I couldn’t answer then and still don’t know now: Was I trying to die, or was I trying to communicate?

Suddenly, I felt tired of everyone. I entered the inside-out world where I would give anything to be free of time. It had taken a little over an hour, but whatever little camaraderie I felt with the people in my life had ended.

Nothing has changed, you’re being insecure, paranoid, bland, even. You’re trying to ruin something good because you don’t like good; you like killing things or letting them die.