day 1.

You open your eyes bathed in starlight. The moon is the tip of your thumbnail hovering in the net of stars above you. Something feels different. Many things feel different. You don’t feel tied to the ground in the same way you used to. You know you are lying down but it feels more like you are hovering above the earth rather than pressed against it with the weight of your body.

You lift your arm to look at it because you were beginning to wonder if it was there. You curl one finger at a time in succession. You look more like fog than skin and you can see the Orion constellation through your hand. You lift the other arm, so they are both stretched out in front of you. You sit up and realize it is true - you weren’t lying on the ground so much as hovering near it.

The earth beneath you is freshly turned. You think of the corporeal you underneath that mound of earth. You feel safe in the knowledge that you are encased in stone and laid out in a box with silk lining wearing your favorite deep blue dress. It didn’t do much for your hips, but they were securely tucked under the bottom half of the casket when your friends were looking in.

Your friends did a really did do a good job with your services. You don’t know exactly how it works but you watched the entire thing. You were glad it didn’t go on too long. Long funerals are awful. You begged them and so they agreed to just the graveside thing. And they didn’t say too many embarrassing things and only a few things that weren’t true. Everyone knew you could be a nice person but were only the nice person about 36% of the time. You would guess that snarky would best describe the bulk of the rest of your time.

You stand up on your feet relieved somehow that you can still walk. It feels like flying is an option, but you want to get the feel of this ghost body before you go swishing through the air like Peter Pan. Besides, with your motion sickness problem, you don’t want to risk ghost vomit on the first day. Who even knows what that would look like? Tiny marshmallows? You laugh to yourself, and you are glad that your sense of humor came with the new cloud-like exterior.

You look to your left and your right. Is there a registration process of some kind? Do you get a ghost driver’s license? Why do you suppose you wake up in the last place that they left your body? You start to walk to see if there is some kind of invisible barrier that keeps you within so many feet of your body expecting at any moment to reach the end of a mythical tether like the old curly phone cords attached to the kitchen handset which was long enough to reach into the living room couch so you could stretch out on it while making awkward small talk with your first boyfriend; a cord that curled back into a tight knot when you returned the faded yellow handset to the kitchen cradle. After a solid mile from the cemetery, you are excited to learn that you are on the unliving cellular line, and you have freedom to move about the country. Can you hear me now? You laugh again at your internal dialogue. You are so relieved you woke up as you.

Can living people hear me? You want to scream but it is the dark of night and there really isn’t anyone around you. Keep that note for later.

Without thinking, you are on your way to your apartment. Why do you feel the need to go there? You aren’t sure but you are halfway to your building, so you keep walking. You are there faster than you should be, and you realize you may have completed a “Beam me up, Scotty” just then because when you concentrated on your apartment, you were suddenly standing on the sidewalk below your window. The light is on inside. Who is there? A new tenant or are they still cleaning out your things? Do you want to see what is going on in the room that was your home for the last six years of your life? What if life has gone on without you with only a minor flicker in the candlelight? Which is worse? Having loved ones pine over in grief for months at a time or having life go trudgingly forward without so much as a blink of an eye?

You haven’t really considered the time factor. How long have you been gone? Is it the day following the funeral, or has it been years since you took your last breath?

The dirt beneath you was still fresh at the graveyard and there wasn’t a headstone placed yet. It can’t have been too long. Right? You’ve been standing here debating for so long that the light is changing, and sunrise is not far from you now. Dew is starting to gather on the grass beneath your feet.

You determine that you have to look. You need to know. You close your eyes and concentrate on the inside of your apartment on the sixth floor. You will yourself back into that space. And suddenly you are standing in your own kitchen facing your living room and the view out over the common area. It is late fall. The sliver of sunlight that has sneaked in is highlighting the gold leaves on the trees which are falling like golden stars to the earth beneath.

You can hear voices in the living room, and you follow the sound. They are there on the floor. Your two sisters and your best friend. They are surrounded by open boxes, and they are sorting through your treasures. They have been there all night. They are laughing now but you can see used tissue in little snowball puddles around all three of them. It looks like they were once trying to pack the boxes but now they are unpacking and sharing what they have found. You sit to listen. Your oldest sister is clutching her favorite picture of you to her chest as she tells the others a memory.

You are torn. This is both the most beautiful and most painful moment you have ever known in life or death. Why did this have to be your first day?

You are sitting in a room with your three favorite people in the world and they are just out of reach. You cannot speak to them. You cannot touch them. They cannot even see you. They don’t know that you are just a breath away.

There’s only one thing you can do.

You need to find a way to scare the living daylights out of them.

Today, you will just be with them.

Day two – you are going to have some fun!