Greeting My Own Ghost

I met my own ghost again.

Another continent. Ancient cathedral burned to cinder. I greeted my ghost there, too. Once. A rainy morning. Late fall.

She dragged me to boxes of stored photographs. High on red lacquer shelves. Mislabeled. Anonymous. A vomit of Costco-printed visuals from trips long forgotten, awaiting the magic of Marie Kondo.

“Nobody will ever care about this stuff,” I muttered and sucked a fresh paper cut.

My ghost insisted. I kept digging for a shot in front of Notre Dame. I still think she meant for me to find these images instead.

A long-ago float on America’s mightiest river. Canoeing to the White Cliffs of the Missouri. Before a haint invaded my imagination and compelled me to write, I slept in an abandoned town. Sliced into waters traversed by the Corps. Maybe they met the nine-point deer swimming beyond my bough.

I know they saw these birds’ nests. William Clark penned misspelled soliloquies about them. And there they were. Close enough to graze with my fingers. I strained toward the sand-hued wall.

A voice whispered, “No.”

MTM steered us past, helped me step from the boat. Before he caught me, I sank knee deep into sand like cake batter. Lightning sand. I was the Princess Bride. He was my Westley.

But even before that July afternoon circa 2005, my MTM was so much more.

He still believes when I falter. He convinces me to take another step when I collapse. And he tells me to keep writing because the world needs my words, even if it doesn’t seem like it right now.

He shows me the way when I can’t fathom it.

And just like that sweltering day at Decision Point, the confluence of the Marias and the Missouri, he’s still right.

Read about the novel partially inspired by this trip HERE and
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