CARPE OMNIA | POETRY

12. the ghosts that stay ( ✎ )

"Hey, can I borrow your pen quickly?"

I looked up to see my younger sister looking at me with an expectant smile from where she was sitting crossed legged on the bed.

"Why though?" I asked, my eyes slipping to the book lying open on her lap.

"I want to make notes in this book I'm reading."

"What kind of notes?"

Her expression filled with mischief. "You'll find out if you ever bother to read the books I've read," she replied cheekily, knowing damn well that I hated reading.

Rolling my eyes at her, I grabbed a pen from my desk and tossed it in her general direction before turning my attention back to my laptop.

•••

Later, I took a book out of her well-stocked shelf, facing some difficulty in pulling it out from where it had been squeezed between two other thick books. The Ghosts That Stay, read the title. It surprised me because I thought she hated horror stories.

Flipping it open, I found a myriad of small scribbles and doodles all across its well-worn pages. They were commentaries on the events and dialogues, messy drawings of how she envisioned the characters to look like, circles and highlights over lines that stood out to her, and sporadic thoughts that made little to no sense to me but somehow still seemed so very her.

I smiled as I traced my fingers across the cute and truly random little "omg, i can SPELL, who's doing it like me!!" scribbled across the top right corner of the fifth page and snorted out loud when I read the "i swear to god, the day my brother stops being annoying is the day he might actually reach his final form," written on the next. A note next to an underlined dialogue between two characters read, "they think super avid science enthusiasts are superior to religious folk but is there really much difference b/w the two when you examine them at their cores?"

I had never quite been able to keep up with her fast-paced train of thoughts. Her mind always befuddled me - but now I was beginning to think that it was a good kind of befuddlement. An I want you to keep amazing me kind of befuddlement. An I want to catch every single one of your stray thoughts before they slip away and hear them all out kind of befuddlement. An I don't understand you, but I want to hug you real tight kind of befuddlement.

I continued flipping through the pages, reading every last one of her notes. My heavy heart lifted just a little higher with every new scribble I read; it felt a little less hollow with every new doodle I traced my fingers traced over. My heart continued to soar and fill with light until I reached the second last chapter and then -

And then it plummeted right back into the dark depth from which it had taken its tentative flight. Breathing seemed too arduous and impossible a task with my eyes frozen on the passage my little sister had highlighted.

"It was as if she had been struck by a heavy bolt of lightening, sending ripples of shock and fear coursing through her veins. The girl in the portrait was her - yes, it was most definitely her, but . . . why did she look more like some ghastly spirit than a living, breathing, healthy young woman? Why did she feel as if she was staring, not at a harmless portrait, but at her very future? And above all . . . why did a horrible, repulsive little part of her cursed conscience long for it?"

And squeezed in the space next to the passage, my sister had written, in a shaky handwriting:

"when i look at my pictures in my phone, why does it feel like i'm staring into the eyes of a girl who's already gone? why does it feel like i'm beholding, not a picture of a living girl, but a ... memoir of the dead? why do i see myself, not through my own eyes, but through the eyes of my family mourning my loss? why, oh why, do i feel as if i could and should be ... dead?"

A single droplet of salty water slipped out of my eye, down the slope of my cheek, and soundlessly landed on the open book - on the word "memoir." It would not be lonely there for the page already held a dried up well of my sister's tears. They were the only part of her I had left.

The Ghosts That Stay, the title had said, and how I wished that were true. But not even her ghost remained to comfort me. These books were the only things that whispered to me that she, too, had once breathed under this very roof. That she was more than this constant ache in my chest. That she was more than just a memory that should fade away with time. That she had been a whole shining universe in her own right.

I hugged the book to my chest.

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All this just because my sister made the mistake of asking me why I wanted to borrow her highlighter. I'm such an overdramatic emo 🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️

I jotted most of this on a paper (immediately after telling my sister that she'll find out what I wrote after she reads the book I'm reading) because inspiration just struck!! So yeah, this is hurried and messy and imperfect. I decided to lock up my stubborn inner perfectionist for once because perfectionism!! usually doesn't get you anywhere!! It's important to just go for it.