The Hamlet Project

It’s bad enough BEING a ghost
Neither alive, nor truly dead,
Entirely liminal
Floating over the boundaries
But to have such a busy schedule , too –
Of stalking and having one’s sins
Burned away in tortuous flames at appointed times!
That pushes the bad news of ghostliness over the edge.
I’d assume it was enough punishment to remain in the world you’d left behind,
Peering in at your loved ones,
Watching all you accomplished drift away in the tide of your no longer being there
Or even just to have died.
To have lost the weight of your body
The beat of your heart
The rise and fall of your breath
The feeling of a breeze whispering over your skin
And the smell of green leaves growing –
That would be loss enough.