I heard this story on the radio. In Japan, on a hill by the sea, the old, white bones of a phone booth stand. People go there to whisper messages to the dead for the wind to carry away. Little updates, gentle greetings, tears. They call it the Wind Telephone.
So this is my Wind Telephone call.
You aren't dead, but you are a ghost. I can talk and talk and talk to you, but you can't hear me, you're in your own world, your own afterlife. I tell you that I know what it's like, because we've both fallen into Hell, but landed in different circles. I don't know your circle. I just know mine, and every time I think I've trudged out of the tar of it, I find myself still trapped in the mire. So what can I say to you to give hope when I'm still sinking in the muck?
I know what it is to be your own hostage, rattling against your skin-cage, screaming soundlessly like in a nightmare, but you're wide awake. We have different ways of fighting our captors. I'm loud and impulsive and weapon-wielding and chattering. I throw lines into the dark and hope they find purchase. I spill myself in ugly, tumbling words. When I Jekyll-Hyde, everyone knows it. I'm a performer. I'm scared of falling into the black. I'm bright bile green: toxic, searing, but full of energy and expression.
But you don't throw lines. Like they told you to in the movies, you stand still as the quicksand eats you. Your words are weapons that are sharp on both ends. Whether you hold them or share them, they cut. You're the falling House of Usher, a slow crumble inward, a final devastating split on the horizon. You're a purple, appealing poison. You're the color of art in a quiet, shadowed gallery.
And I don't know what to do, because your monster raises the hackles of my monster, and I'm afraid of letting them get too close. But that's what keeps happening. When I stare the ghost of you in the face, when you're that spectral self, I feel my monster shift and growl under my skin. Because I'm terrified that there's nothing I can do, and fear is my monster's favorite meat. It doesn't matter what chains I've looped around its neck. When it smells my helplessness, when it hears my closest loved ones mention its name and the things it's done, it will claw its way out. Not as powerful as before, but still with those hungry, seeking teeth.
There was another story I read this week. This woman wrote her friend's text messages into an AI, she computed him back to life. A linguistic echo. I can't help but think of your words. They're scattered here and there, extensions of yourself, red and pulsing and alive. No one writes like you. Surprising sets of sounds, details that become the DNA of a character. You write with such visceral physicality. Faced with your ghost, I can find your body in your poetry.
Which is how I wound up here, wind-telephoning. Because I don't know what else to do. Because holding it together isn't always an option. Because I'm afraid of ghosts.
Maybe you won't see this. Maybe you will, and you'll be angry with me. Good. Be angry. Be real. Hear me, talk to me. Let me help.
Please, return my call. I'm waiting by the phone and listening to the wind.