The Opposite of Ghost

Something's happening to this house. On all sides of its flaking wood flanks, a chorus of dark-leafy arms have exploded from the earth. Do they beg, laud, or aspire to the sky? We can't be certain. But there is beauty in chaos, and so we bless the triumphal shoots, the inquisitive vines. No longer alarmed by their preternatural growth, we can even smile at the green octo-bush scaling the other side of our bedroom wall.

This is a house with the opposite of ghosts. It's the living things that form the stubbornest roots. I felt that lying in bed last night, in the eerie comfort of the silent lightning storm that glimmered outside. Dark green turned briefly silver, and made visible a matching set of interior vines.

Imagine a shipwrecked sailor, falling into exhausted sleep on the soft, shifting sands of an alien beach. Imagine the sailor's shock to awake in this—this aggressively terrestrial space—and yet feel mysteriously at ease. Curiosity sated. Unsurprised by safety. In this new place that feels like kin, or even part of my own body. This new and fleeting home.