If you listen, really listen, silence means about the same thing as noise.
Head to a bus stop, please, and I’ll explain what I mean.
There are all sorts of fantastic ghosts at bus stops. My grandfather said this is because the ghosts want to go somewhere, be something. But by then he had trouble remembering my name—like the ghosts do.
There are ghosts who will make you a little bit frightened, ghosts who will make you ask questions. There are the ghosts who will make you wish they were a little more corporeal and you a little more ethereal so you might clasp their hands and lend them a bit of strength.
If you’re in want of a specific example (though if you are, I think perhaps you might not have been listening well enough), there is a ghost who sits on the corner of Max and Benedict.
(Now, if you’re feeling pedantic today, you might pull out your map, your phone, your atlas. You might walk to the street. You might tell me there is no bus stop here. There are no streets named Max and Benedict.
To that I say—you need to learn how to look harder. And perhaps put down that atlas and listen).
This ghost is old—older than you, older than me, older than the Starbucks your parents say has been around for positively forever, we had our first date there, why do you ask? He carries an umbrella, even when it’s not raining. It is made of whalebone, with a ribcage that makes it sit ramrod-straight even when the winds seem like they should knock it over, knock him over.
If you sit down next to this ghost—and I highly recommend it—he will reach inside pants patched with a wedding quilt and pull out a wallet. He will show you a sketch of three children that’s more charcoal smudges than facial features. He will point to them, say those are mine. Say aren’t they beautiful.
If you ask their names, he will turn to stormy silence and the clouds will roll just a little closer. If you ask how old they are, you will see the first fat wet droplets land on a car windshield. If you ask who their mother is, there will come a sound like bowling pins clattering.
Then (then then then) there will come a clap of thunder, a flash of lightning, and you will say perhaps I’d better go. He will shrug, heft his umbrella even a little higher, and you will dart out like a scared squeaking rodent.
Now for the noise.
Another ghost haunts the bus stop next to the smoothie-used-to-be-a-record shop.
When you arrive, she will be applying a face full of chalky stage makeup, adding rouge to paint her cheeks and a shelf of eyeliner until she looks like a marionette doll. (I recommend you do not tell her this, though).
When she notices you—which she will, unless you are the type of person who orders plain butter pasta at restaurants—she will immediately pat the seat of the worn bench, which appears to be leather mixed with rubber. Sit, sit, she will say.
Her floral housedress moving in the breeze, she will point to the man crossing the street. See him? His wife left him five nights ago—this with a small, knowing smile—and now he comes to the café to flirt with the barista with the grey-brown mustache.
Then she will grab your arm—it only feels like a breath of air—and gesture excitedly to the new family getting out of the car. Look, look. Their daughter took her first steps today. The father was so excited that he sent the video to his whole family back in Europe. Look, look.
You will look, and she will talk, until finally there are no people left to point to, and the stars have triumphed in their battle over the sun. Eventually, you will ask her story, and then she will grow quiet. Then—why, darling, I’m of no importance, really. Now, if you look at the grocery store three blocks down…
You will not know what to do with this, so you will make awkward excuses and bade her a good (is it really?) night.
Now, tell me. How did you like your stories?
Those were not stories, I hear you say. They were noise and silence. But you are just not listening closely enough. Perhaps you should go back tomorrow, look at the faded charcoal lines on paper and the starlet with golden ringlets some more.
I wish I could tell you more about them. Tell you the things that they’ve forgotten, tell you why they cling to noise and silence as desperate balms. I wish I could save them. But it’s too late now.
I can only pass them along to you.
They were ready. They smiled. They welcomed me with open arms. I cut their thread because it was their time. My own is slipping away like a spindle in a fairy tale—soon, I will be with them. I will forget everything, like they did.
Please. Visit them. They did not deserve this as a fate.
And maybe—if you wanted—you could visit me too.
Photograph courtesy of Canva.