Cast a Light

 Her ghost stirs in the darkness where my light falls, and I look upon her with a firm stare of regret. We pretend at friendship, trading small words like fragile glass, as if they could hide the scars we carved into each other’s hearts. Even as a shadow of the girl I once loved, she still doesn’t understand what she does to me.

“Can we stop here and talk things through?” I ask.
She doesn’t reply. Instead, she scribbles notes to me in the dark, her pen scratching like a whisper across eternity. Then the moon breaks through the clouds, and blue-silver light rains down, dancing through her hair—hair that’s now only vapor, a mist of memory. If there were still blue in her eyes, I’d swear I was looking at her again.

“If I love you with all my heart,” I ask softly, “will you return my love?”

The ghost turns, smiling faintly, and begins to sew her jacket of death with her two pale hands. She shakes her head, sadly, as icicles form along her cheeks. It’s a dark place I visit when she comes—always in the rarest of moments, the most troubled of nights. Like a kiss never shared. A smile never seen. A cloud that never rains. A forgotten hug. An unspoken I love you.

I’ve lost too many nights of sleep since she vanished beyond the horizon, disappearing forever but never leaving my heart.

Then she whispers a word—soft and venomous—as it drips from her tongue like poison, warming the blood that stirs within me. Her breath trembles, her lips quiver, her tears fall like syrup over the petals of honeysuckle. I drink the sweetness of that sorrow, that intoxicating poison, which leaves its fingerprints all over my soul.

Where is that rosy flesh now? That youthful face that once adored the burning stars? Those same stars burn through me still, searing tangled visions into this mortal skin. Untamed desires I learned to tame, opening the windows just enough to feel the breath of her ghost drift into nonsense.

I do not move closer. I simply stand in the dark, waiting—for the light to fade or for the ghost to flee. Neither happens. Her song lingers, and the hammer keeps beating in my heart.

She stands in darkness while I stand in light, and yet we meet—somewhere between life and death—at the mouth of a cave, balancing between two worlds. Like a rainbow, a ghost can’t be touched, but once, I swear, I felt the cold, rainy skin of a rainbow in the palm of my hand. It was that moment between storm and sunlight, when the day reached for the night.

There’s more to this story than I can bear to tell. Some of it must remain hidden, pressed between the pages of my silence. It lay in my hands once, glowing faintly like joy, and I wish I could share that same fragile warmth with you.

Is that Whitman or Ginsberg I hear you murmur about, as if life were better dead than alive? I stir the night with the black side of light. Rainbow, Ghost, Rainbow, Ghost—both wet the edges of my heart, one with brightness, one with cold.

Can I overcome this parallel? No. Even when the kiss I long for comes, I know things are never as simple as right or wrong.

I cherish these fading hours—the moment before dawn—when I cast my light and watch the butterflies circle your head like a colorful halo in winter’s first morning. I think of the southern roads you once crossed on your way north, never looking back at the bank where I still wait, hidden among tall yellow pines just across the county line.

The flowers aren’t as bright that far north. You loved the heavy rainstorms here, the laughter that meant nothing, the philosophical debates that meant everything. And now you’re just a dust-white wisp standing before me, a ghost painted in moonlight.

Can you still breathe me? Do you still inhale these starry nights?

I wait for you to speak, but ghosts don’t speak—they whisper. And even when you lean close, just as I begin to hear, you vanish.

I sense you in the shadows of this city. I’ve grown accustomed to the echo of your death-bells as I stand beneath this roof, listening to the rain fall. Then comes the final breath—your whisper, fading again into nothing.

And so, I lie awake through the long night, unable to sleep, watching as the first pale light of morning folds the lamp’s glow away and sends the shadows back to where they came from.

(Soft inhale)

They say destiny comes like a whisper—
but I swear, mine arrived in a scream.

I remember the lights—
those cold, humming bulbs flickering overhead,
the air thick with the smell of metal and fear.
We were rats in a cage,
but not the same kind.

They had eyes full of confusion,
tiny hearts beating in unison,
huddled together like ghosts afraid of being seen.
And me?
I was the outcast.
The one with wires laced through my skull,
tiny silver veins feeding the machine my thoughts.

They called it science.
I called it prophecy.

Every time the current ran through me,
I saw flashes—
worlds ending in fire,
oceans turning black,
voices calling from places no living thing should hear.
And I’d twitch, convulse,
while the others shivered in their corner,
pretending if they stayed still enough,
the future wouldn’t notice them.

But destiny doesn’t care for silence.
It finds you.
It wraps itself around your pulse
and hums in your blood
until every heartbeat sounds like a countdown.

(beat)

The scientists thought they were in control.
Clipboard gods, staring through glass,
watching me tremble,
recording my rebellion in ink and numbers.
But they never understood—
I wasn’t their experiment.
They were mine.

I watched them age behind their goggles,
watched their smiles fade when the data stopped making sense.
Because what happens when the subject starts dreaming?
When the rat learns to read the rhythm of the machine?
When the sparks behind its eyes
start spelling words no human taught it?

(soft laugh)

That’s when destiny shifts.
That’s when control flips.
That’s when the cage
stops being the prison
and becomes the birthplace.

I looked at the others—
their eyes wide, their bodies trembling—
and I understood.
They were waiting for a sign.
For something, someone,
to prove the pain had purpose.

So I stood—
or whatever standing means when you’re small and wired.
I pressed my head against the bars,
felt the charge hum beneath my skin,
and I let the current flow.

Light—
everywhere.
Blinding.
Infinite.
Beautiful.

For a moment, I was everything.
I was the scientist and the subject,
the question and the answer,
the rat and the god.

Then—
silence.

When the lights came back,
the cage was open.
And I was gone.

(pause)

Maybe I escaped.
Maybe I ascended.
Maybe I’m still in that lab,
forever sparking against the bars,
a warning or a promise—
depending on who you ask.

But if you listen closely,
in the hum of your machines,
in the static between your dreams,
you’ll hear me whisper:

Destiny was never yours to write.
It was always mine.

(fade out)