mercifulserpent

the virgin of flames -- chris abani

"There is of course the question of ghosts," she said.
"Ghosts?"
"Well, yes. Everyone is attended by ghosts," Iggy said. "What matters is whether we begin to attend to them."
"How do you mean?"
"With some people, the ghosts are transparencies, barely visible as they hover around, sit at the next to them and so on. They are particularly hard to see in bright sunlight. Sometimes, when memories are revisited, there is a flickering of light and shadow, image and text across them, and for a moment they flare up and then vanish."
"Ghosts are the things, the shapes we make with our memories," she said.
"Ah. So if some are light like..."
"Like well-worn lace drapes blowing in the wind."
Black smiled.
"Yeah, like that. Then what are the other ghosts like? The ones we attend?"
"Like thick black lines drawn in a notebook. They are visible, brooding dark clouds that we drag around with us like reluctant sulky children. We feed them and they grow big and their haunting dominates our lives. We love them and we hate them and we are always measuring them for a coffin, yet we cannot let them die."
"Why?"
"Madness, my friend. Madness."

-- Chris Abani, Virgin of Flames, pg 35, 2007