Apparitions

It keeps coming up lately.

The time she came to me as the sound of a wet snap.

A spine, breaking backwards, floating weightlessly in a languid, somehow still living body. Her halves shimmying away from each other as the sound of their separation echoed in my dreams.

I didn’t understand it then. But I wasn’t afraid. And neither was she.

I’ve been practicing breathing down into myself — a thing I seldom dared to do frequently enough when I was younger. My body tends to fight me when I try. Parts of me like closed doors, my breath pressing into them, and dispersing.

People talk all the time of hauntings, in this little subculture. But I think the truth is, everything we are haunted by is inside us.

I breathed down and this time, I insisted. And sometimes doors open if you ask nicely.

I can’t even remember what I saw. Only what I felt, eyes wide shut. My shallowness came first, with the furious urge to swing at the chair beside me.

My depth came second, and my control of my breath completely collapsed, jagged and storming, floored and gasping.

What have you been hiding behind this door all these years, little one?

I don’t know. I wish she could speak to me — whatever version of me this was. It was a long time ago. A forgotten fear to all still living, just a lonely apparition.

I can’t breathe.

I didn’t even ask nicely. But she obliges. And the tension of a spine slowly twisting gently clicks in my ears.

There’s nothing to be afraid of.

Fear happens in your heart. Not anywhere else. The anxieties of this life?

It means nothing to the free.

Free this little one. Let her go. Send her home.

A wet snap echoes in my head.

Breathe out.