Poem:

"A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place." 
                                            -Rainer Maria Rilke

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place.
Kept preserved within it; the memories, the things
we'd rather forget, the truths and the lies
we tell ourselves for decades and milleniums.
A place is not supernatural, neither is a spirit. They
are both physical and mental hurts of the
shells of people left behind. They are not unlike pressed flower petals
in a musty tome found on your great uncle's bookshelf
in the middle of a winter, keeping safe the sunny technicolor days
he spent with your grand dad who passed away last spring.
For the thing that places and ghosts happen to have in common is
our need to get rid of them without letting go.

Monday Muses:

My favorite children's book is the Velveteen Rabbit. It made me cry so much when I was a child. It was probably more of a personal connection with the book that made me react like that. I also had a toy rabbit when I was a little girl. The rabbit that I had wasn't mad of velvet or anything special, just plain material. However, it was the way I obtained him and the memories I shared with that poor beaten up creature that make him special. When I was little, my mom used to go to church and she would take me along with her. We lived in a small suburban community back then and the church was mostly all russian speaking people. In their midst, there was a solitary shriveled up old german lady who could barely speak english. She somehow found out that I loved rabbits and one day she gave me this rabbit. The rabbit certainly didn't look like anything made in the modern world. It wasn't the cheap polyester, plastic bead filled, hardly animal looking things that were usually sold at Ikea or Toys 'R' Us. He was a wool rabbit with the quality of toys that could only have been made in the 1900s at a fancy toy factory. I loved him immediately. The stories and memories that I shared with that rabbit are endless. I remembered that I chewed on the string whiskers of his face. I remembered hosting tea parties for that rabbit. As a little girl, I would receive tons of dolls from my father's colleagues. But as the morbid and cruel child that I was, I would usually decapitate, undress, cut up the clothes and hair, and mutilate the dolls, or whatever was left of them at that point. The plastic carriage from the dolls though, I would keep and cart around the rabbit in it (at least until the day I got the brilliant idea of taking a ride in the carriage myself and broke it). You get the picture, I was obsessed with the rabbit. I refused to go anywhere without him. Once, the day before my seventh or eight birthday, I left him at a store. I refused to go to bed that night and stayed up until I nearly passed out from sleep deprivation. The next morning my dad drove out to that store and brought him back. It was the best birthday present ever that year. I guess the Velveteen Rabbit affected me so that I wasn't able to imagine my life without a rabbit.

Monday Muses

The black cat pads slowly down the alley. Its dark shadow seems lighter in color that the creature's thick, heavy pelt. The cat seems groomed, though it's counterpart is not. Its coat sleek, shiny, not a hair out of place. Her walk also seems somewhat aristocratic, she in good health condition, not limping, but striding forward boldly, with purpose. She looks to absorb and devour all distrustful glances sent her way. Her tail swishes softly, sweeping away all loud fall leaves. A turn into a cold corner, and she is gone. Gone like the last orange wisp of summer, come like the hint of ebony white winter snow. A soft jump into warmth clad fingers, a gentle breath mixed in with a purr. She has become her. She looks on at her frostbitten fingertips and murmurs at the fallen shadows. And just like that she has come and gone.

Inspired by the poem Black Cat by Rainer Maria Rilke