\u00a0by Oana Celia Gheorghiu<\/p>\n
Neither here, nor there. Her here is not where she is. She is there only because acted like you didn\u2019t want her here. She thought that she needed a somewhere. An anywhere. Across felt like ersatz back then. It feels like darkness now. Mind void. She took what was given to her without asking herself whether she wanted it or not. She clearly didn\u2019t: even ghosts make mistakes. Eerie, how things change with a word. \u2018That is not what I meant at all; that is not it, at all\u2019, <\/em>Mr T.S. might say. She just wants here. Here is where her heart is. The heart cannot be there. The green grass across poisons the mind. The heart is safely severed. Left behind: here, with you. Depression grows stronger in the absence of the heart, in the perpetual separation. You will not listen. Dearest. I feel certain that I am going mad again\u2026 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Here I left it! Oh, but here too\u2026.\u2019 <\/em>In the white halls with venerable computers that sometimes won\u2019t start. On the narrow corridors with lowboys with old books that no one reads. Past glory and cultural intertexts. I belong in the past. On the loggia hazy with smoke, in the room the women come and go<\/em>. Safe, safe, safe<\/em>\u2026 I love being here. Loved, perhaps? No, love, though I don\u2019t live anymore. Ghosts retain the ability to love, apparently.<\/p>\n Here is 60, she only had it nine. Time would pass so swiftly here. \u2018When summer came\u2014\u2018In winter snow time\u2014\u2018 <\/em>then the door slammed shut on her and the time started dilating. Three years a slog. She sought in vain for a place here, but she ended up there, adding locks to the door to her heart\u2026 and then she came back, beseeching. Ghosts can pass through locked doors. \u201cWell, you can\u2019t!\u201d<\/p>\n In-betweenness. A vague sense of belonging in the garden, by the artesian well. Between here and there. Near water. Water is welcoming but it ruins perfectly drafted farewell notes. Virginia knew it. I don\u2019t think a person could have been happier than I have been. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cLeave it here if you wish. Feel free to feel tolerated here. Keep haunting. Just don\u2019t be here. There is good for you. Be there. From here to eternity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll be by the fountain. Maybe\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Here is not available for the moment, please try again later. Today is only yesterday\u2019s tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes. Platitudes are so maddeningly true sometimes.<\/p>\n A room of her own <\/em>in the attic of a dilapidated school, in another country, far from here, where she plays the teacher and hopes that she plays it somewhat like you. Just a humble disciple of the Lady of the manor. Otherness hurts, let\u2019s replace \u2018other\u2019 with \u2018former\u2019, it has a nicer ring to it. Oh, but it hasn\u2019t!<\/p>\n \u2018She\u2019s looking for it, she\u2019s drawing the curtain.\u2019 <\/em>You resume your reading without care. \u201cWhy did you go there? The treasure was here. You left, you left it.\u201d \u201cI never left, I wasn\u2019t, in fact, here to leave.\u201d \u201cIt is you who went there. Why are you still coming here?\u201d \u201cI love here. You.\u201d But the door stays locked. Saddest of all \u2013 old lodgers still say that you keep the door locked. She ignores them because you are in her heart, because she refuses to believe it, no matter how often she hears it\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cWhy are you still going there?\u201d echoes from there. \u201cYour there is my here.\u201d There would like to be here. There will never be here. She doesn\u2019t belong there, just as she doesn\u2019t belong here either. U<\/em>nsafe, un<\/em>safe, un<\/em>safe\u2026<\/p>\n