New Forms and Ghosts

I never did believe in ghosts, but what is a dream of someone you can never see again? Isn’t that like a ghost?

Melanie haunts me when I sleep and I look forward to seeing her there. Right after she died, I had disturbing dreams about her flesh and bones—the decay that naturally comes, but in one dream that all changed. In that dream, she was on an operating table and from her tissue; she was being regenerated one step at a time. It was gruesome, but got progressively lovelier as death began to work in reverse. First, the tissue grew and was little more than a mound of red muscle and white sinew. Then the muscle pulsed with blood and took shape as bones formed within the mass. Next an inhumane gray skin began to cover the tissue and soon looked like a human form without distinction. From that point, she grew definition around her joints and her beautiful brown hair began to grow. Her face surfaced out of the shapeless void and even a healthy pink color replaced the pale grey. When the process was complete, she was even lovelier than she was in life—freckled, bright eyed and humming with life.

Now my dreams simply star her as a major player. She is sometimes my companion—experiencing what I do, talking or sharing with me. We laugh at our mom, cried over a dead sister and she even held my son.

I feel like I’m going crazy when I wake up in the mornings, but I enjoy our surreal moments together.