When I was eight years old I found under the house a ghost who came when I called her, to stand at my feet on the porch. I took her weightless form up in my arms and placed her on my shoulder. I named her Midnight after my cat. They were the same pure black.
That year, in second grade, Midnight came with me to school. Cafeteria chit-chat, cartoon theme music, the girl I liked from far away. On the shoulder of the road, under the dappled shade of oaks, in the cow field by the railroad tracks, we met and named a dozen friends a day—insects, dogs and cats, dragons and fairies. Midnight was my secret, I wasn’t allowed to play with ghosts.
But there were others too, ghosts I gathered on the way. Weightless as the charcoal smoke off the grill, as the cool air and clear sky in spring.
When I was eleven I started middle school, where the other boys played with us. Hard-fought battles by the trampoline, sparks and shadows, teeth and claws, wins and losses. Midnight dazzled us all. We passed the hours together, me and all of my friends, eating blackberries behind the school, talking on the floor at night—cicadas outside the window. Out of the palms of our hands we picked the ripest fruits by their shine.
Ghostly husks clinging to the window screen, for the friends I made and lost.
When I was fourteen I started high school. That year I spent alone, Midnight clinging on my shoulders. On the bench after school, quiet afternoons, waiting for the car. Then there was Rachel, with ghosts of her own. Sharing secrets, kisses in the dark. Soft embraces, tears and laughter and loneliness. Midnight the cat had died—through it all Midnight the ghost beside me.
A ghost for heartbreak, stuffed full of polyester fluff and settled in my lap.
When I was nineteen Midnight walked with me on campus sidewalks, inhabited the apartment we all shared. A ghost on the streets of the city, in the light of the windows at night. Driving to work, to a concert, to the emergency room. To the laundromat, to the pool. Until I got sick and went home.
A lingering ghost for my pain, sprawled across the linoleum.
At twenty-one I transferred, was lost in a crowd of thousands. Seated on the lawn, in a chair at the bar, in the library overnight. Sixteen-hour work days, girls with long hair at the lake, new friends whose names I have forgotten. We watched black and white movies in private rooms—movies in foreign languages, movies about ghosts. Between classes I sat with Midnight at the bus stop, a cooling shade overhead, scrawling answers in my notebook.
A ghost for my youth, burned in the pixels of my screen. I glance and look away.
Then I was twenty-four, the teacher at the front of the class. Before me a hundred eyes staring, moments of panic and peace. Midnight—tired as I was—sleeping early on my chest. I had a fiancee then. Dates at the fairgrounds, aimless trips to the beach. An afternoon marriage, with the glow of stained glass in her hair, on the carpet at her feet. My Midnight was ours.
A jealous ghost for every self I could have been, watching out through my eyes.
An evening passed, and four years after. In our room of the house, in our little trailer with gaps between the walls, in our starter home on a slope. With our dog and cat, our two snakes, our ghosts. Short walks on weekends, a very long drive to the vet. A hole in the yard, into which we placed his body. Blue sky in spring over viridian leaves, purple and yellow wildflowers where I learned the names of all the plants, the insects too, each and every ghost. Midnight has settled down, lustrous black and heavy on my shoulders. Comfortably she sleeps between us at night.
Blaine Vitallo is a thirty year old writer and after school director, from North Central Florida. A graduate of the University of Florida, he admires the works of Italo Calvino and Khalil Gibran, and he is fascinated by the exploration of the deeply human elements of the strange, the mythical, and the surreal.
BOMBFIRE 