Where do ghosts come from?

People living in war-torn lands, not quite fleeing from the senseless, aimless weapons fired by people who think of this like a video game, trying to capture strategic points, not even bothering to avoid the “soft targets,” the civilians, because there’s the terror that comes with seeing women and children and knowing all you would have to do, is surrender.

It’s in underground churches and temples and mosques, in public newspaper staff rooms, in people afraid to even say it out loud, screaming it in their hearts: our “leaders” don’t speak for the rest of us. In living ghosts, shells of people walking around dazed and at best half alive.

It’s the people you try to ignore when they quietly disappear from the landscape of your thoughts, trans women turned away at a border because military law requires all men to stay, and even though they have post-op breasts and hormone-induced feminine features, there’s the adam’s apple and the birth certificate to say no, you really are a guy.

It’s all those outliers and everything in between. Ghosts live between the cracks, in the origins of actual human experience.

Can you see me?

I’m standing right in front of you.

Can you see me?

I’m standing right here. In front of you.

That’s where ghosts come from, and we all know it. This isn’t news. It’s old stuff, older than old. Don’t pretend like you don’t see it, when we all know you do.

***

I am now way behind on my posts. I wrote a bunch of posts and meant to get them scheduled but – among many other things in my life, I find it hard as a writer to keep writing and not thinking about real-world events affecting people. For O, I kept the title I originally had planned, but wrote this in response to real-world events, specifically I was inspired by what I feel in my spirit to be true and by this article I read in The Guardian about trans women being turned away at the border, despite in many cases being real women (legally) in real danger of God knows what if LGBT hostile Russians were to get their hands on them. I was like, oh, that’s a whole other kind of terror.

Here in the U.S., I know that I am “spoiled” and by spoiled I want to say treated decently compared to parts of the world where I probably would not have survived long enough to write much of anything. And this makes me want to … pause, rethink. I don’t have to (want to) have sex with people to really feel for them, and in fact I sometimes feel – deeply – for people I have not even met, but I know in my heart – we are not so different. ❤

I’m not sure if I can continue with the A-Z Challenge. I really did plan to do the whole thing, but emotionally I’m a wreck right now. I keep saying I’ll get caught up eventually, but then eventually keeps not happening. It’s now Monday and I’m over a week behind and looks like it might not happen, so I’m just putting it in my writing now. Anyway. Thanks for reading.