Ghost Town

I walked across the bustling streets and boulevards, busy with the humdrum concerns of human life. Pass the sea of familiar faces and into the woods I walked, along the road less known and travelled. I felt the night breeze blowing across my face, on my naked skin. All the trees stood like skeletons under the midnight sky, and  I could see the moon and the stars hanging high above my head. 

There was a town known as Ghost Town- a town made up of memories, and memories alone. It manifested itself and the reality of its existence not to all, but only to those mortal eyes that refuse to believe in the dwindling of memories into nothingness after they had come to pass. I rambled along the trackless path, unaware of time or the shadows of the night surrounding me. By the river that bore a reflection of the violet moon, I could see a glimpse of a small town. It appeared buoyant and merry. Just a glance of it gave me a sense of joy and elation too profound to be described in words.

I marched forward, floundering and fidgeting. The people were ghosts from the past, people who are now no more, just as you are you, but not the ‘you’ you were a month or year ago. They were unaware of my intrusion, because I, a hopeless wanderer, made of flesh and bones, did not have an entity in that mystical town. I was as invisible as a lost soul walking unnoticed through the face of earth. Life seemed to go on for them, just as the present reality I came from, except that time was replaying itself over and over again. I watched them like scenes from an old movie and felt a tide of emotions washing over me as I relived the past memories with them. 

I saw myself, my ghost, little me, held by my father’s arms and crying on my mother’s lap. Barbies and ABCs, bruised knees, playing hide and seek with my little friends- life was but a dream. My face had a look of innocence and serenity that had somehow disappeared with time. I watched myself grow into a wild and rebellious adolescent who hated the world and the people in it. Sneaking out, breaking the rules, the bitter tears and laughter, the reckless and impetuous choices and decisions- all of them was worth the experience. Then I caught a sight of you and I, our ghosts, and everything else came to a sudden halt. 

I was smiling at you as you were singing to me. I saw us walking down the street in the pouring rain. I saw myself hopping on your old motorcycle and we travelled the road late at night, just to feel the wind and the adrenaline pumping through our veins. The sound of your voice echoed, vowing to never let go of me. The pure and gentle love I saw gleaming in your eyes and through your smile, was and will always be a thing of beauty. We were illuminated by a force bigger than ourselves. We were alive; we were infinite. I saw us fixing each other, but we kept ruining ourselves over and over again. I saw what made us and what destroyed us, what we lost. I watched as we descend into nothing more than a memory, a tale to be told for other times. We became silhouettes.

By the time a new dawn cracked and the first light appeared on the horizon, the time had come to bid the past adieu. Slowly and steadily, the town began to wither away, and the ghosts of our past evaporated into the thin air like a puff of smoke. I stood still- alone in the woods. My eyes hovered around and overhead, and the beauty of the sky and everything underneath it left me awestruck. Then I lay myself on the barren ground and felt the earth beneath my body. The embrace of the coldness was almost brutal, but yet so sweet. A profound sensation, not of pain or melancholy but of nostalgia, overwhelmed me. It ran through and through me, until every fiber in my body pulsated to the symphony of longing. And given the chance at that moment, in the woods, in the coldness and solitude, I would not mind fading into an eternal memory with you.