The Subtle Art of Making Ghosts

It started out as a ghost story, but it may be a funny story instead, about a girl in need of birthday wishes from someone in heaven, only she didn’t believe in heaven or life after death, but on that special day, she would compromise all her beliefs and take anything as a sign; she’d even settle for subtle signs, like a solitary cloud in an otherwise clear sky, or a sudden cool breeze during a hot summer day, or even the waters touching her feet while sitting on the beach. She’d count the petals of a rose, and if the number was even, it’d mean a happy birthday wish from above, a game of ‘he-loves-me/he-loves-me-not’ but with roses and heavenly revelations instead of daisies and romantic doubt, and the number was even indeed, and she believed in heaven if only for a second, and that was cognitive dissonance in progress but it was also bliss.

It started out as a ghost story, but it may be a sad story instead, about a girl whose life-puzzle would never be complete, because there was already a missing piece, the puzzle dissolving before it fell into place, and she knew she wouldn’t replace that missing piece, and there would be more pieces missing with time, before she, too, was a missing piece in someone’s puzzle, since that someone would love her enough to wish for a heaven even if heaven isn’t real, and that someone would give her a ghostly home inside their mind-heart-soul before letting her go to vanish forever, and that was despair in progress but it was also hope.

It started out as a ghost story but it unfolds into a sci-fi story instead, about a girl wandering the woods, then meeting an alien in the form of a loved one who traveled through space to wish her well on her birthday, to mend her broken parts, and she saw the spaceship landing in the clearing, and she rushed to the neon door and stood there waiting, because she knew who would come out, who’d travel that far to only give her a hug and eat birthday cake, and she asked, is this reincarnation, but the alien stared like ghosts stare when ghosts can’t speak because they can’t let you know what it’s like on the other side, and the girl didn’t mind the silence, and that was nostalgia in progress but it was also joy.

It started out as a ghost story but it unfolds into the chronicles of dreamland, a girl’s trip inside the land of unfinished business, because it happens in life, too, but in dreams it only takes a pat on the back, or an alarm clock, and everything falls apart and nothing is complete; the forest disappears, the alien fades away, the words are left unsaid, the spaceship dissolves into still life and memory, and only love remains, and that is frustration in progress but it is also bird songs, and new dawns, and beginnings.

It started out as a ghost story and it’ll end as a ghost story, about a girl who saw a ghost on her birthday, because she needed the lie so much that she became an expert at making ghosts, because sometimes we invent the truth we need and we make up ghosts and we place them inside our mind-heart-soul, and when they leave, we say, take me with you to keep me together, and that is grief in progress but it is also love.

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist from Athens, Greece and the author of We Fade With Time by Alien Buddha Press. A Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions nominated writer, her work can be found in many journals, such as the Chestnut Review, New World Writing, Milk Candy Review, the Bureau Dispatch, and others.

A Song for Mileva