By Kelly Lynn Thomas
And eventually, we all become ghosts.
Our bodies fail. Our hearts cease. Our breath stills. But our souls, our essences, those indefinable, slippery, mystical things—those continue on. Our ribcages decay back into dust and our flesh feeds the soil, nurtures new life. Death is only a new beginning.
Ramona calls them to her, one by one. She has watched them struggle and grow and change everything they touched. The young ones, lost to accident and suicide and murder, are first. But in the end they all come. Doctors, lawyers, artists, the housewives, the ones without names, the ones we never met, the ones we forgot. Denied the chance to become a mother in her own life, Ramona becomes one in the afterlife.
She calls them to this city because she likes that it’s closer to the sky than other cities. She likes its Old West roots that remind her a little of the place she grew up, lost to time and relentless development. She likes the proximity to the mountains and the hustle and bustle of modernity juxtaposed with all the men in cowboy boots and ten-gallon hats. Plus, she is dead, and she enjoys alliteration. She could have picked Detroit, or Des Moines, or even Dallas, but none of those cities had the same ring. Denver it is.
Some of the ghosts have business to finish after their deaths. Some have trouble saying goodbye, letting go. Ramona did, too. She remembers her own journey, circling back to the bar where her ex-lover shot her, the blood stain the barman hadn’t been able to quite erase. She remembers the longing to dance again, her feet pounding on the floor, the vibrations ringing through her spine. She wanted to clap and sing at the top of her lungs, but her hands connected without noise and her voice sounded like the faintest breeze. She screamed—a silent, impotent scream—knowing she would never again be able to feel the soft nose of her favorite horse or feed him carrots.
Time is a salve. It brings distance and wisdom. It brings change. Ramona watched the world change around her—she marched alongside the suffragettes and rallied with women fighting for the equal rights amendment. She stood alongside women brave enough to name the men who’d assaulted them while the world ridiculed them on national television. She was a ghost, but she was there.
Eventually, they come to her. They let go of what was and embrace what is.
“Welcome, sister,” Ramona says. “Welcome home.”
And now? Now they are free. Free to make their own home, in their own way. Ramona was the first to realize this, but she will not be the last.
These women, these ghosts—they sit together on hot summer nights, watching the stars blink alive in the deepening twilight. They laugh in chorus, because although most of them never met in life, they are connected all the same. They drink the moon, and spark new dreams for everyone who will come after. They dance under the midday sun, the rush of rivers in their cores. They imagine the world reborn. In dreaming, they make it so.
They are the nebula become stars, become life.
Kelly Lynn Thomas reads a lot and writes strange fiction in Pittsburgh, PA. She lives with her partner, one dog, a cat, and a constant migraine. Her work has appeared in Permafrost, Sou’wester, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and other journals. Kelly received her MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University, is a coordinator for the VIDA Count, and can always be found with a large mug of tea. Read more at http://kellylynnthomas.com.