oh sweet 70%, those are bedroom eyes

so look, there’s this little second-hand shop down the road from where i live – used to live – whatever. it’s lit like the inside of the sort of photograph you might find tucked into a forgotten shoebox in a forgotten attic in a forgotten town west of where you intended to end up; all yellowed and browned, you know? like the whole shop’s the aftermath of a place, a ghost too wheezing tired to fix itself up, so even the light seems slower and older than it’s meant to except for in this one corner, just opposite the window over the door where the only plate of clean glass sits. i don’t know how that plate got there, maybe the owner’s got a kid or something, but the beam of light that comes through there is the sole spot of color in the whole place – well, except for the yellow and brown – and the items for sale, i guess – oh, you know what i mean. 

anyway, i bought this scarf for you. 

the thing is, i’m not sure that you’ll wear it – i’m sure you won’t wear it – it’s not really your size or your color – well, colors – and it’s uglier than the last thing i said to you, is the truth, the real truth. it looks like it belongs in that secondhand shop and not wrapped around the really, if you think about it, the shockingly fragile combination of skin and tendons that someone – god, whomever – saw fit to sit your head upon. that’s the kind of thing you would say and i think about it – fragility, i mean – sometimes when i can’t sleep and the brown and yellow gets to me and i hunch my shoulders in a forgotten attic, town, photograph buried too young inside a shoebox nobody ever opens. i just sit at the bus stop with the wind howling yesterday’s slow dirges and the wool tassels of your scarf rough underneath the pads of my fingers while i keep rolling them and rolling them, trying to work the itch out. i’m not going to work it out – the itch, that is – you and me, it’s hard to know, that’s what i’m saying. not saying. forget it, anyway.

Q: Do you have a favorite ghost story?

A: My favorite ghost story was one told to me by a woman who commissioned me to make a piece about her sister (’Tethered to my Heart’). This woman was an identical twin, and very close to her sister. They often spoke and texted each other twenty times a day. Her husband was an identical twin as well, and his identical twin married her identical twin.

When she approached me, her twin sister had just died, six months before. She told me that when her sister died, she too wanted to die. Life seemed to lose all meaning and substance. Often it seemed there was no point in continuing on. She and her husband decided to purchase a vacation home in New Hampshire. After they unpacked the moving vans, her husband drove back to the city for work, leaving her behind in the new house. The electricity had not yet been turned on, and as the evening progressed, the house became dark. She lay on the bed upstairs in the dark room. She was wondering how long it would take, if she just stopped eating all together. As she lay there, she became aware that she heard footsteps downstairs in the house. At first she was scared – she reasoned that people had seen the moving vans and the dark house, and had decided to rob the place.

“Good,” she thought to herself, “I hope they kill me while they are at it.” She listened as the footsteps crossed the floor beneath her room, and then as the footsteps climbed the stairs. Then the doorknob to her room twisted and the door opened. She lay curled on the bed in a fetal position, and listened as the footsteps approached the bed. Then, she smelled her sister’s perfume. Her sister climbed into the bed behind her, and curled herself around her, spooning her the way she often had when comforting her as a child. Her sister’s presence was utterly tangible and solid. She opened her eyes, and the room was filled with a blinding white light, like klieg lights were on. Gradually the presence of her sister faded, until there was only the slight pressure of her hand on her shoulder. After that, her depression eased, and she was able to go on.