Being dead isn't nearly as boring as you might think.

I discovered this on my third day of non-existence, when I finally stopped trying to open doors and learned to simply pass through them instead. The trick, I found, is to forget you were ever solid to begin with. Forget the weight of bones and blood, the constant pull of gravity, the way air once caught in your lungs. Remember instead that you are now made of the same stuff as moonlight and memory.

My name was – is? – Thomas Webb, and I've been dead for approximately eight months, two weeks, and five days. Not that time means much anymore. When you're dead, moments can stretch like taffy or snap past like rubber bands. Sometimes I watch the sun rise and set so quickly it looks like someone's flicking a light switch. Other times, I spend what feels like hours watching a single dewdrop slide down a blade of grass.

I haunt (though I prefer the term "reside in") a small town in New England called Millbrook. Not because I'm bound here by unfinished business or ancient curses – at least, I don't think so. I simply never felt the pull to go elsewhere. Even when I was alive, I rarely left town. Why start traveling now?

Besides, there's more than enough to keep me occupied here. Take Mrs. Henderson at number forty-two, for instance. She's been stealing her neighbor's newspapers for three years, but only on Wednesdays, and only if it's raining. I spent two months following her around before I figured out why: she lines her parakeet's cage with newspaper, and she's convinced that newspaper stolen in the rain brings good luck to pets. I can't argue with her results – that parakeet is seventeen years old and still singing.

Then there's the teenage boy who sits in the park every Tuesday afternoon, writing poetry in a battered notebook. He thinks no one can see him behind the big oak tree, but I float by sometimes and read over his shoulder. His metaphors need work, but his heart's in the right place. Last week he wrote a sonnet comparing his crush's eyes to "pools of Mountain Dew," which was both terrible and oddly touching.

The living can be endlessly entertaining when they don't know they're being watched. It's not creepy if you're dead – it's anthropology.

But I'm not always a passive observer. Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly solid, I can manage small interactions with the physical world. Nothing dramatic like moving furniture or writing messages in blood on the walls (though I'll admit I tried once, out of curiosity – turns out being dead doesn't automatically make you good at horror movie effects).

Instead, I specialize in tiny interventions: nudging dropped keys into view, generating the perfect cool breeze on a sweltering day, ensuring that the last cookie in the box is chocolate chip instead of oatmeal raisin. Small kindnesses, barely noticeable but precisely timed.

My finest work happens at The Dusty Tome, the bookstore where I used to work when I was alive. My former colleague, Sarah, still runs the place. She never knew that I harbored a decade-long crush on her, and now she never will. But I can still help her in my own way.

I've become quite good at guiding customers to exactly the book they need, even if they don't know they need it. A gentle cold spot near the self-help section, a subtle illumination of a particular spine, a barely perceptible whisper that draws their attention to just the right page. Last week, I helped a grieving widower find a cookbook that contained his late wife's secret cookie recipe. He cried right there in the aisle, clutching the book like a life preserver. Sarah gave him a free bookmark and a cup of tea.

The other ghosts (yes, there are others) think I'm too involved with the living. "You need to learn to let go," says Eleanor, who's been dead since 1847 and spends most of her time rearranging flowers in the cemetery. "The living have their world, and we have ours."

But I've never been good at letting go. Even when I was alive, I held onto things too long – old tickets stubs, expired coupons, unrequited feelings. Death hasn't changed that aspect of my personality. If anything, it's given me more time to cultivate my attachments.

Take my cat, for instance. Mr. Whiskers (I didn't name him – he came with that regrettable moniker from the shelter) is still alive and living with my sister. He can see me, as most animals can, but he's remarkably unfazed by my transparent state. Sometimes I lie on the floor next to him while he sleeps, pretending I can feel his warmth. He purrs anyway, the sound vibrating through whatever passes for my soul these days.

The hardest part about being dead isn't the lack of physical sensation or the inability to enjoy coffee (though I do miss that). It's watching the people you love cope with your absence. My sister still sets an extra place at Christmas dinner. My mother keeps "forgetting" to delete my number from her phone. My father pretends he's okay but visits my grave every Sunday with fresh flowers and updates about the Patriots' latest games, as if I might be keeping score in the afterlife.

I want to tell them I'm still here, that death isn't an ending but a change in perspective. I want to tell my sister that I saw her ace her dissertation defense, that I was there in the back of the room, cheering silently as she fielded every question with brilliant precision. I want to tell my mother that yes, I did get her messages, all of them, and that the cardinal that visits her bird feeder every morning is not me, but I appreciate the thought.

But the rules of death are strict about direct communication. The best I can do is send signs they probably don't recognize: a favorite song on the radio at just the right moment, a unexpected whiff of my cologne in an empty room, the feeling of being hugged when they're alone at night.

Sometimes I wonder if this is hell – not fire and brimstone, but the eternal frustration of being able to observe but never truly connect. Other times, usually when I'm watching Sarah shelve books or listening to my father's one-sided conversations at my grave, I think this might be heaven. The ability to witness life without the messy complications of living it, to love without the fear of loss, to exist in the spaces between moments.

I've developed hobbies, as one does when faced with eternal existence. I collect overheard conversations, storing them like precious gems in whatever serves as my memory now. I've become an expert in the secret lives of squirrels (far more dramatic than you'd expect). I've learned to read upside-down books over people's shoulders on park benches, and I've mastered the art of predicting rain by watching the way cats clean their whiskers.

But my favorite pastime is what I call "emotion painting." I've discovered that strong feelings leave traces in the air, visible only to the dead – streaks of color and light that linger like aurora borealis. Love is usually gold or deep rose, anger burns red with black edges, and sadness flows in shades of blue and silver. I spend hours watching these colors swirl and blend, especially in places where emotions run high: the hospital waiting room, the high school during prom, the small chapel where weddings and funerals alike are held.

Today, I'm following a new pattern of colors I've never seen before – a strange mixture of green and purple that sparkles like static electricity. It's emanating from a young woman sitting alone in The Dusty Tome, reading a worn copy of "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir." She has dark circles under her eyes and a hospital bracelet on her wrist. The colors around her pulse and swirl with an intensity that draws me closer.

As I hover near her table, I realize she's not actually reading. She's crying silently, tears falling onto the open pages. But there's something else – she keeps looking up, scanning the bookstore as if searching for something. Or someone.

Then she speaks, so softly even I almost miss it: "Thomas? Are you here?"

I freeze (metaphorically speaking – I'm always technically frozen now). It's Lisa Chen, a regular customer from my living days. We used to chat about books, particularly ghost stories. She once told me she could sense spirits, but I had dismissed it as whimsy. Now, as I watch the colors dance around her, I wonder if perhaps she was telling the truth.

"I know you're probably here somewhere," she continues, still speaking barely above a whisper. "Sarah told me you used to help people find the right books. I could use some help now."

I drift closer, fascinated by the way the green and purple lights seem to reach out toward me.

"I'm dying," she says matter-of-factly. "Cancer. Stage four. The doctors say I have maybe three months." She laughs softly. "I'm not afraid of being dead, exactly. I just want to know... is it lonely?"

For the first time since my death, I wish desperately that I could speak. I want to tell her about the beauty of emotion paintings, about the secret lives of cats and squirrels, about the way love looks like golden light and how sadness can be as beautiful as stained glass.

Instead, I do what I do best. I create a gentle breeze that ruffles through the nearby shelves until a small, leather-bound book falls onto her table. It's a collection of Mary Oliver poems, opened to "When Death Comes."

Lisa picks up the book with trembling hands and reads aloud: "When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn... when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut... I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?"

The colors around her shift, the purple fading as the green grows brighter, more peaceful. She smiles, touching the page gently.

"Thank you, Thomas," she whispers.

I stay with her until she leaves, watching the colors trail behind her like a comet's tail. Then I do something I've never done before – I follow her. Not to her home or to the hospital, but to all the places in town that still hold beauty: the park where the teenage poet writes his awful, wonderful verses, the bench where the widower sits feeding pigeons, the small garden behind the library where Sarah takes her lunch breaks.

At each stop, I paint the air with every beautiful thing I've seen since dying, every moment of joy and wonder and connection I've witnessed. I don't know if she can see the colors, but I paint them anyway – gold for love, silver for hope, and a new color I've never used before, one that looks like sunlight through leaves, that means "you are not alone."

Being dead isn't what I expected. It's not an ending or a beginning, but a different way of being. A way of loving the world without being able to hold it. A way of touching lives without leaving fingerprints. A way of existing in the spaces between heartbeats, in the pause between words, in the moment before tears become laughter.

And sometimes, if you're very lucky, it's a way of showing someone else that the cottage of darkness isn't dark at all. It's full of colors only the dead can see, but the living can feel.

I think I'll stay in Millbrook a while longer. After all, there are still books to be found, cats to be comforted, and stories to be witnessed. Besides, I've heard there's a new ghost in town – a teacher who's been rearranging the letters on the high school announcement board to spell out poetry at midnight. I should probably introduce myself.

Being dead, I've learned, is just another way of being alive.

She pours the milk tea

In two olive colored porcelain cups;

I set the chairs

In the verandah of our little home

facing few distant windows

of a cemented white shed.

The orange of the dawn is

Melting into its wide plate of blue

Like the ripples of water

Spreading across the stillness of the sea.

"The tea's getting cold",

My eyes murmur into her ears

And she looks me through her leaned lids,

Smiling through the sound of the sip.

I take two spoonful of sugar,

She takes one

And drinks it hot the way it is.

I drink my tea half cold

So she could sit beside me a little longer

by the time I drink the last sip

My tea won't go as cold as

the stillness of the sea.

Today is one of those days

Where I smile

When my insides are tearing up

Where I beg the air to be considerate

Before my tears well up

Where I talk

But actually want someone to listen

Where I try to be jolly

Without having a vision

Where I hope I make it alive

While wishing I don't survive.

×∞ Adin

15 July 2022

“It’s cold.

I think I needed you here.”

\ Message sent \

I tucked my cell phone back in my pocket and folded my legs enough to lift them up a little higher to make them rest on the bus seat and clutched my right arm around the head rest which was partly cotton flesh and partly cold callous steel, a bare reminder to make me miss his absence more. I carried black hot latte in my left hand but it barely made any difference.

Windows showed no signs of empathy; I could relive my old bus school days drawing lousy

shapes only if my gloves could have allowed. Soon after I realized that my sitting position

resembled a pyramid of cashmere designating that my eyes were on bait with this bizarre

weather.

I could feel the warmth leave the bus like someone’s last letter to his lover from the last

droplets of his ink as soon as people started to take their leave. I surveyed a little through

the atmosphere and could plumb the only scent of humans which reeked of fatigue and

stuffed fabric. I counted the totality of 14 including myself.

“5 more stops to go”, a familiar voice whispered and my subconscious confirmed. I looked

behind but my eyes went foggy. HOW COULD HE POSSIBLY NARRATE MY EXACT

HALT? HOW COULD I MISS TO COUNT ONE MORE HUMAN EXACT BEHIND MY

BACK? My skin follicles stirred up into needles and pins. That voice seemed neither

unfamiliar nor welcomed.

‘Did you check your notification, Valeria?’

THAT VOICE AGAIN! THE VOICE!!! ADAM? BUT HE DIED LAST YEAR.

“It’s cold. I think I needed you here.’

“NO STOP!!!! WHO ARE YOU?” Why did the weather go so hefty I can’t see...? ADAM? You

can’t be? My hands bowled over to unmask his cloudy face.

“I’m here, Vale. Right in front of you“

My entire body froze like an effigy of cadaver. The crisp of the steel could no longer be felt.

He sure was Adam.

ATTIC LAKE HOUSE, AREA 76. The beep buzzed. So my eyes did win the bait. I looked

back once again before departing the bus and smiled. Adam was here.

Right, so that little joke right there is how I laugh off anger.

Hi all, welcome to The Weird where we step into the mind of a functional member of society to figure out how they do it. You may ask, "Do what?" Just know this episode isn't for you.

The day starts like most days, sleeping in until the utterly last possible moment. Now, therapists might worry about chronic insomnia and its impact on mood regulation and future cognitive decline, but we're going to write this off to our coworkers as "not being a morning person" which is a more common and less dreadful sounding condition. Moving on.

Coffee, or the socially acceptable form of chemical dependence, comes next. Fun fact: stimulants can act as antidepressants for some people. We won't talk about the meteoric rise in coffee consumption along with mental health issues. It's probably not a causal link. Whatever those are. Coffee up! Remember to use cute mugs to feel even more vindicated in your addiction.

Next, log in to deal with the people. Technically you had to deal with the person you lived with before now but after two years in lockdown they're quite over you and again, you're not a morning person. That one perky morning person at work will immediately latch onto you. You will smile and put up with them because their mental stability is barely better than yours and emotional anchors these days are more like bumper cars, take your boosts where you can get them.

Next proceed to fall into habitual unhealthy patterns of stress addiction - your other socially accepted vice - and get things done. Nobody cares how so long as you do, so a few breaks here and there to stretch, wrangle pets, get yelled at by your grouchy lockdown partner, eat, fetch more coffee, and so forth, will make the wasted hours of your life lass more quickly before your existential dread can set in. This is vitally important to your day.

After work you clock out and refocus on food, your one unhealthy coping mechanism you've desperately spent a lifetime trying to get a better grasp on by teaching yourself to cook, good on you, not that your grouchy housemate cared other than to bitch that you create more dishes. You also do dishes. Then watch something funny and geeky while you eat, which again isn't healthy but it beats trying to engage in conversation with the ungrateful prat who literally gets all his meals made for him yet still finds shit to complain about.

After food and shows - which said negative bastard will watch until suddenly they're "mindless drivel" he's only bothering with for your benefit - you will turn to your second computer and attempt to find connections to people who don't make you feel taken for granted or mindless, either by chatting with old friends via social media or watching some funny short videos whilst secretly dreaming of a van life, on the road and away from this building you barely afforded that has now doubled in value to where you could never afford it now. Then laugh to yourself how all your money goes to fixing the shack from the fifties up until there's none left for a real vacation, like the one you haven't had in probably five years now. Not that anyone's counting. Your partner never needs them, why should you.

After you waste another evening on wishful thinking and unfulfilled plans, maybe some creative distractions or games to round out the night, go take your libido-killing antidepressants - the real ones now, not the stims - and some melatonin supplements to kick off your sleep hygiene routine. It's important to try, even if you'll wake up inevitably in four hours anyway. Like the health coach said after your therapist put you on meds then ditched you, you're just going through a transition period. Keeping habits is vital to your body eventually getting back on track naturally. One day you'll get back to your self care regimen, and things will be better.

For now though you take your pills, say goodnight with a fifty percent chance of hearing it back, and climb into the second bed as you have for who knows how many months now, they all blend together. Maybe you'll dream of happier things if you manage enough REM to dream at all. Most likely you'll be up at 3 AM fetching more tea and trying breathing exercises that barely contain the tears.

Which is fine because as everyone knows, you're "not a morning person" - which is arguably much better than the other labels you've worn over the years - and this is just another transition period. You'll get through it.

Because "functional" isn't just a therapy standard - it's a survival trait.

And tomorrow nobody will care how you get your shit done.

want to cry at the

thought of being asked to stay;

for now and onward

they are supposed to be kingly fishers.

so what the hell were they doing, nesting on top of a walnut, next to my fifth-story dorm room?

we were about thirty miles from river, pond, or stream.

and yet, these colorful fellows were colonizing the place!!

i spent early mornings looking at their antics. i tried to entice them with presents left on the windowsill.

but they don't fall for such bribes.

sadly, at some point they decided that living off of the land is antithetical to their rebelious nature.

they left me alone. looking at a branch of a walnut tree...

You never realize how many songs you really don’t know all the words to, until you’re singing with someone else in the car with you.

So, the way I see it, is you’ve got two choices:

fake a distraction & stop singing or

freestyle like a rockstar!

You ran covering those miles between us

And I could just walk some paces.

A cubit was the distance left but

My footprints are what your heart traces.

My blood trailed the previous handspan.

Tears puddling since the first yard.

Your palms containing my weary face

As I leave every inch of you, my lifeguard.

×∞ Adin

7 April 2021