you’d never guess the new apartment was all white in the dark…
its easy! cut a wall from the fabric of temporal time, fold the roof along the dash-ed line. i reach for the stars see daylit crescent against pale ottawa blue now, quietly though: she was so nice. Can’t remember if it was art or french our stifled accelerated world revolved around substitutes, substitutions our oxygen thats when i discovered Casper again at home with chicken noodle soup if I emptied my mind i could pass through walls, or at least into the black and white tv set with the broken rabbit ears while mom sewed in her sewing room, everyone else at school, a sewing stillness, my mom humming between power surges from her footpedal, dad at work, there were pins and needles in her carpet knees and toes, eyes ears mouth and nose.
The sound of water dripping, green moss in the shadows ’neath glistening grafitti, a faint echo, wondering if I’m alone, the air prescient, dank and dim light my new companion that alone afternoon, a friend feeling utterly forgotten. The church gutted for condoization, i stood peering up from the once pewed sanctuary, retracing my feeling steps the bannister up the pitch black stairwell an everest tether, screen mesh prised at a cant off the deserted laneway watch with an involuntary shudder i wonder if i can climb back up from the deep well where sunday school once was held, forever and ever return to myself, peering up, me as shadow, two high forgotten spaces, dusty and redolent up toward the back. Bell towers. The one to the right summons me, the silent spire draws me further upward, a long makeshift ladder at an impossible cant leads to a trapdoor, a beckoning hatchway in still another ceiling: a room alone and off-limits atop the tall grey room. thoughts careen and collide, listening for footfall. A foot, my own on the first rung, satchel securely slung grasping the right rail eyes dialed upwards and begin my descent, against all common sense i turn my gaze downward once aloft, the tall room swimming within its spire, taking a last look before poking my head through into the new grotto lest i somehow fall, the ladder secure behind me as I half-crawl flattening my previous self a husk falls away, this new darkness the new space all dust smell, the smell of night mote dust motes in want of daylight forgotten. I discern Leaning-Tower-of-Pisa-ean boxes, stacks of papers, silent organ pipes leant into corners, the cloudswept moon through slatted vents overhead along the north facing wall, I am turret, I am interlocutor in time, the room slanting with the passage of the moon, I prepare for my descent.
the streets in my hometown not as i remember them, at least in this part of the old town, they wend, zig-zag and cul-de-sac when least expected.
I’m done with kindergarten. I am old now. I climb places alone now. I build a nest behind the scary door in the corner of my bedroom, aloft, a high shelf hidden within the close cupboard, kicking away my homework chair, safe. A portal to soon-I’ll-be-seven, a hidey-hole I can call my own, snugly lined with my kindergarten orange blanket pillow sewn in my secret perch. i take up books to read. I hide away with Animals of the World. Harriet the Spy. Robert Louis Stevenson, reaching over the abyss to prise the closet door almost to, my soul left slightly ajar. One Sunday my sister climbs up. It’s nap time: I won’t budge the chair, promise, the both of us laughing, we’re supposed to each be in our own rooms. Two could never squeeze in, even alone my head crinked to the side I hear the thickness of my hair, the sound of static electric against the chalky paint. only the sound of breath, the sound of reading.
At a certain point I realized that Casper is a bit of a dweeb, something even menacing about him/her, all that dopey friendly good cheer. Once or twice I furtively turn the knob after Batman’s done. We’re not supposed to watch more. Thirty minutes a week, that doesn’t last long. “I’m telling you for the last time: sit back from the television set!,” the constant refrain; six feet the closest we’re allowed, yet like it’s some parent-child ritual to be repeated forever and ever, we inch closer, moths to the media flame, jockeying for screen position. The TV screen sparks to the touch, the carpet our butts wiggle across makes our hair stand on end: “It’s only the end of Casper!” buys us time. It’s cool how Casper can stick his head through walls into other people’s business, rooms otherwise inviolate, snooping and invisible. None of your beeswax I want to walk through walls, wish hard enough you can make it happen. I walk through walls. I become that ghost.
