The Spookiest Of Them All May Not Be the Supernatural

Rather, the choices that we make as a living collective (poetry series)

Monday: Ghostly Silhouettes

Ghostly silhouettes dancing across my vision, awakening me to the spooky fact that perhaps I own too many clothes and now some of them, hastily hung on my bedroom door, register as ghostly silhouettes whenever I wake up to pee.

Author’s note: Love the cardigan in question though. It hangs on my bedroom door for convenience but because my bedroom door is glass, at night, it looks like someone is floating at my door. I’ve already Marie Kondo-ed my closet for old clothes, but instead of throwing it to landfill, I’m trying to sell off some of my old clothes before hauling all of it on my journey to the nearest (but still very far) donation bin.

Tuesday: If death was my lover

If death was my lover, I have but one question to ask —

is there a heaven, or is there a hell? or do we instead recycle old souls?

for if all who died ended up in one of two places, would it not become a landfill of sorts, despite infinite storage?

if everyone who died simply became a ghost it wouldn’t make sense for anything to be haunted by only one spirit, for the dead would simply just form such a high concentration it would be pancake stack of ghost upon ghost upon ghost upon ghost upon ghost upon ghost.

if death was my lover, I would show her my love, through my deep-rooted curiosity.

Author’s note: Anyways death is not my lover, but this poem does perfectly illustrate what it is like to date me, with my 902 questions generated from one seemingly straightforward topic. Do you ever think about the concept of ghosts? And how if ALL of them genuinely died and existed around you, just how packed they would have to be?

Wednesday: Which behaviour that I know has negative effects do I repeat over and over again?

Some have the Asian flush, flashing bright red as their body rejects something meant to be fun.

Perhaps I sit at the intersection of this experience, not quite the one to go full-on red, yet my body working its away to immediately reject any sort of fun, as soon as I started one.

I have 15 minutes of Fun and Buzzed lightness where it feels like I’m but a floating spirit ready to fly away like Seung Ngo to the moon,

then BAM! goes my instant hangover a soft lulling brain squish that radiates across my skull, notifying me immediately that something is up, and this ache it spreads all over, as if I’d worked out for days, sore limbs and sore calves, sore on both body halves.

Yet because there is 15 minutes of bliss, I do this again and again — not addictively, thankfully, but every 7 months, I’ll think, maybe it wasn’t that bad, maybe just one drink will be okay, and sure enough darkness, my old friend, returns.

Author’s note: Asian flush is caused by lacking an enzyme to break down alcohol to be broken down in the body. I’m guessing I do have the enzyme to some extent because I don’t actually get the Asian flush, but the almost-instant hangover sure isn’t friendly. The cycle usually looks like this:

• I have a drink because of an event, and I think, “it’ll be fine”
• I am viscerally reminded of this experience and avoid alcohol for the next 7 months
• In 7 months, I have forgotten the visceral experience and go “it’ll be fine”.
• Repeat.

Thursday: When and how do I question myself in relationships?

Like unrealistic depictions of high school being full of cool people and drugs and peer pressure to be met with the reality of high school comprising of acne, stressing about marks, and nerds all around…

I, too, think that relationships depicted in movies had some distance from the love I’ve received in real life.

Rather than one moment in time (yes, I’m talking about love at first sight) being in love is an amalgamation of choices and commitment made, day in, day out.

It’s asking yourself daily how best to support your loved one(s), or, how best to open up and lean into the support that others provide.

When I ask questions in a relationship, I’m sure to balance both ends, and I think, we all naturally fall to one or the other.

Some naturally ask more about what others can do for them, forgetting their role in supporting others.

Yet others were taught they would only be lovable by what they can give to others, never knowing how to lean into support.

In a true relationship, I believe in regular check-ins for building into both kinds of questions, as equal participants in the relationship.

Author’s note: Are there romance movies about regular, old, boring but loving relationships? The ones where you just sit on the couch and enjoy a good episode of Squid Game*? While I do love a romance movie, especially a classic rom com, I do think there’s space to be held for the “boring” romances that nourish us all, day in, day out.

*If you haven’t seen it yet, PLEASE DO! It’s incredible.

Friday: What is right is often forgotten by what is convenient? (Bodie Thoene)

Motivated by greed, we forget that the earth cycles in finite resources, instead of promoting an abundance mindset that pursues infinite growth beyond the capacity of our land.

Sure, abundance mindset can be powerful when talking about human creativity, and other abstract concepts like opportunity, but let’s stop pretending that we can infinitely tap from our non-renewable resources in name of accruing wealth.

If there is no earth safe enough for all of us to live, then what is the point of all this money?

Author’s note: It frightens me when people choose, day in, day out, choose convenience over reality, yes. But it frightens me most when I choose to do so, caving in to the tantalizing jaws of what is easy rather than what is right. I know. There’s only so much that individual consumers can do, when most of the pollution is created by large corporations. Yet, does that absolve us from needing to do our part and moreover advocate, vote in the direction to minimize impact by these large corporations? Maybe, after all of this, I haven’t given up. Maybe that’s why I’m still fighting.

Hi I’m Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) and I want to thank Diana C. for the first round of spooktober prompts! I’m really excited for the rest of this month’s prompts! ❤ 🎃 PS, I PUBLISHED A BOOK 📚

Hop down the rabbit hole? 🐰🕳

^ by Winston