A Ghost

Those who don’t believe in ghosts must not have dreams. Ghosts visit us with stories beyond the horizon where the light cuts abruptly to dark. That axis is the land of dreams, and ghosts await us there. Last night I saw a ghost. My dog returned to me and to home. In my dream, he stood there in the garage with dirt caked over his white and shivering body. He stood there like he always did when he was ready to come inside and be warmed and loved. Our love was the hearth to his little heart, and I’m sure it was beating still and rapidly in my dream when he found it fitting to finally pay me a visit. The soil caked over his shivering legs. His eyes looking at mine as if to say, I am home again. His head turned in that quizzical canine way, as if to say, I have returned from where you buried me beneath the dirt and the soil and the twilight and the shadows. And in my dream I saw his shivering body quiver to be loved again, to come inside from the dirt and the earth and return into the beating hearth of the home. His shivering legs quaking in the quietness of the air and the dust. Not cold. No, he was not cold. Only relieved to return home. Back inside and away from the musty soil and the lingering darkness and the stillness of my dream’s periphery. He wanted inside to be warmed by the beating of hearts. Hearts that missed his presence, that could only warm themselves by replacing his absence with soil and flowers beneath the shadows of trees in the dark. And I was scared to let him in, not because of his presence or the soil (which could never get inside anyways, because to get inside it would have to first reach the heart and that is always protected by the threshold of warmth and the hearth) but because I knew my father would shiver there beneath the trees and the shadows. But here, in the softness of my dream my dog had tried to come home again. And I don’t know how long or how far he wandered in the shadowlands of other dreams to return here. Despite the warmth of the collective hearts beating beneath the trees, I shivered and with this shiver I heard the trees whispering to the shadows and the children behind the trees making these shadows. I shivered thinking him wandering softly underneath the horizon where the darkness coalesces with the soil and the shadows. I only know that he followed the timbre of our hearts beating against the twilight. He followed the rippling dust as it shivered in the air, all from the pulse of our hearts there in the shadows. And I am ashamed that I was scared to let him in I only wanted to clean the soil off so that it could not come closer to the heart. Clean the soil and the dust and the silk of the shadows. I wanted to say that I’m sorry he had to travel so far just to find me beneath the shivering trees in my dream. . I wanted to say that I’m sorry that I was scared to go out there in the shadows and search for you. I’m sorry that I cannot explain the shivering or the loss or the twilight. I miss you, and I’m sorry I cannot retrieve from the soil and the dusk.