Growing up, I spent a lot of time underneath an old cowboy bar some people would later claim was haunted. And not just any kind of haunted, but the cursed kind. The kind where a devil dog brushed against people, marking them for death. The kind where elementals, mythic supernatural beings tied to the alchemical elements, collected spirits to display like dolls for future charlatan mediums to discover on TV shows about the paranormal.
No, I don't believe in those kinds of hauntings. To me, the real elementals are our memories. They're the slippery creatures that haunt our lives, filling up empty spaces between the then and the now.
We are the collectors and curators of disappearing things, arranging them as they lose opacity. We are our own ghost. Who we were haunts who we are becoming, and we mark ourselves with the invisible every day.
When we are gone, a transparent piece of us stays behind. It clings to the minds of those who knew us and we wrap ourselves around memories like cellophane to keep them fresh. Our parting gift, or curse, to the lives we brushed past when we were more solid.
