Some people do not believe in ghosts, but here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, ghosts are everywhere.  They can be seen frozen at gas stations, roaming the streets of downtown, dying over and over in the oldest neighborhoods, clanging from the city buses and even cooking refried dead animals in pricy restaurants.  Ghosts are everywhere in this city of the dead, and I have met one.  She suffers the same death day after day.  First, she is exploited for a minimum wage at T.G.I. Friday’s, where she burns her fingers without breaks for hours at a time while dipping shrimp in burning oil.  She is ensured to work only enough hours as to not receive benefits, even if that means kicking her out after a one-hour, on-call shift.  She is transparent to the managers, who cannot seem to notice the air moving as she walks among them.

Ghosts like her have died poor, so she doesn’t have a car.  Instead of driving home from work to rest in peace, she walks three miles in the snow at one in the morning, much later than the latest bus.  She comes home and eats her first meal of the day, but without chewing it, since the permanent smell of grease that forever stinks in her clothes has a way of fumigating flavors.  And there, at this shared home that steals over half of her paycheck, at this place sixty miles away from her own daughter, she rests.  Not peacefully, not gracefully, but agitated in worry.  She dies there.  She dies for five to six hours until the alarming sounds of the latest drug-related arrest right next door revives her so she can suffer in purgatory one more day.

This time, it is Sunday.  The Rapid buses only run every hour or two, so she must perform a desperate search for change in her room two hours earlier than usual to get to work.  She waits at the bus stop for twenty minutes, even in sub-arctic winds, just to ride a bus that takes her in the opposite direction of where she needs to go.  Maybe she only needed to wait five minutes, but a bus that carries only ghosts could care less about getting dead people on time to their graves. This is her punishment for working too hard.  The bus arrives at the central station, where she must wait half an hour for the next bus.  This one, which is also late, will drive her back to her side of town and will leave her half a mile from work.  She walks to work.  She burns her hands in boiling oil, receives her absolute minimum payment and walks home again because hey, it’s Sunday, so the buses stopped running at five.  She gets home almost empty handed since she was only allowed to work two hours today.  And now, now she wonders, she worries, about how ten dollars will feed her for a week and take her to see her daughter, who is sixty miles away.  So, she cries.  She cries herself to death.

It is on a Thursday night that she finds out she is pregnant.  But the father wants no ghostly child; the father wants no more [!] children of his own.  He wants to dump it while it is still an unborn kidney bean.  He wants to bury it in the past, assuring no one will ever know this little [!] ghost ever existed.  She refuses.  She refuses to give up the one thing that is now giving her life.  She refuses to give up what remains of her soul.  She would rather battle all the blood-thirsty daemons of this purgatory than to sink, without hope to reemerge, into the fires of Hell.  But Hell is closer than she thinks.  Her social worker, who has been charged with helping zombies succeed, has not gotten back to her in several months.  She must now hunt the streets in search of her social worker.  She must now roam the streets in bitter desperation, hoping to at least get a paper form that will assist her newly developed housing needs.

Two weeks later, and just a mere five weeks into her pregnancy, she finds herself at the verge of Hell.  Her tooth breaks.  She is in pain.  She is in an indescribable amount of pain.  However, she has to work the next morning so she cannot take care of it just yet.  She goes to work, and then calls the emergency services of Cherry Street Health Center.  But they can’t hear her.  They can’t hear her pain.  They can’t acknowledge her existence.  They are unwilling to listen to the whining sounds of a ghost.  She has to wait until Monday morning to get the help she needs.  She has to wait three days to rest in peace.  That night, she comes home and she cries -- no, not cries, screams -- and says she is in excruciating pain.  Excruciating, wow, now that’s a big word, she thinks.  But the truth is, excruciating is the only word that can accurately describe the suffering of her lost soul.  She takes only enough pain killers to prevent upsetting her baby, her kidney bean, but not enough to actually stop the pain.  She cries.  She cries in desperation.  She cries with excruciation.  But this time, she cannot cry herself to death.  She can only cry, and scream for compassion, and toss and turn, and feel the sharp pain killing her from tooth to brain.  And now she knows; she knows she is in Hell!  She must endure the agony of burning up and being shot on the face, over and over again, not only through this night, but through the next night, and the next, until the Westside Health Center opens on [!] Monday.

She is tired of crying.  She is tired of crying out for existence among the living dead.  However, her most pressing priority is to get this aching tooth taken out of her and her child.  She leaves home early, but her bus is once again late.  Her bus is running almost twenty minutes late.  She gets to the clinic before the sun even comes out, but she is three minutes too late.  She walks into the Westside Health Center, where her spiritual presence is just that: spiritual, ghostly and nonexistent.  The people there cannot see her face.  The people there cannot feel her pain.  The people there are less human and less alive than the ghosts like her.  She is three minutes too late, so she cannot be seen.  There is no one before her, and there is no one after her.  She is, in fact, the only patient there.  Yet, she cannot be seen, because she is three [!] minutes too late.  She is desperate.  She asks for a prescription for antibiotics, or at least pain killers, to help her through the day.  She asks only to remain in this world one more day, until she can come back the next morning to get the root of her misery pulled out.  But both she and her baby, both are denied; both are denied the right to exist.  Both are denied healthcare.  Both are booted out into the coldness of the morning and into the most dangerous street of this dead city.  To the clinic, she is dead.  She is a ghost.  She does not exist and has no right to exist.

The very next morning, she arrives twenty minutes early.  That is a whole five minutes before the doors even open.  She comes in, but the people there do not seem to notice the cold air that slips through the door.  They see no one and hear no voice.  She speaks -- albeit she screams inside -- for a third time now.  But it’s Tuesday.  They can only see one patient today, and even though she is the first one there, she may have to wait until five in the afternoon and may not even be seen at all.  In other words, she can wait there all day, but she will probably be seen right through, deserving only of a ghost.  To these people, she is dead.  She and her baby are ghosts.  They cannot see her.  They have denied her for the third time the very care they are funded to provide.  A charitable organization my [!]!  The moment they say no to a pregnant woman, they moment they say no to her and her unborn baby three times and boot them out into the streets, they are by definition not charitable anymore.  They are now less holy than a grave.  To them, this poor pregnant woman maybe just another ghost, but to those like her, she is a very real person, a very real person carrying a baby in her womb.  She is a very real pregnant woman who now stands in the street with an infection on her face and not a place to go.  She is a ghost.  She is a ghost among thousands of ghosts in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the city of the living dead.

How do you tell someone that you like her? Do you take her out on a date, and wait until the perfect moment comes, when both of you are in tune and are feeling really comfortable with each other, and then just blurb it out? Or do you go out on a date to have fun, and tell her how much you care through kind gestures until eventually, when you are walking side by side, your hand bumps into hers and suddenly there is contact. Then, you grab her hand and if she doesn’t let go, you smile, you stop walking, turn face to face without letting go and say, I really like you? Or maybe you walk her to her car and as you are saying goodbye, you grab her arm and pull her aside. Then you say, wait, I like you; I mean I really like you?

But what would she say? Would she be left speechless and stare at you with a glazing smile, and then giggle and look away for a second when you are done declaring your love? Would she keep her hands tight and squeeze yours, while she anxiously utters with happiness and patiently waits for more? Would she be passionate and throw her arms around you, then tell you to shut up and kiss her, and cut you in mid-sentence with an electrifying kiss? Or would she reply, I know, I like you too, then give you a minute kiss and say you’ll talk more later? Or maybe she’ll kill you when you let your guard down with a dreaded phrase? That is really nice, but I’m sorry, I just don’t feel the same way about you. You’re a really nice guy, but I only want to be friends. Can we be just friends? And of course, you’ll agree in both shame and defeat, assure her you can be friends, and ask her to forget you said anything. But inside, o inside you will burn in shame, and inside you will die that day knowing that you will never be friends. Then, you will walk away and you will find every excuse not to see her again. Of course, she will do the same.

I wish I could see you tonight, just before closing my eyes, as we kissed goodnight.  My arms would wrap you tight, while your legs would interlock mine.  We would cuddle against each other with a subtle passion that would spark bodily friction throughout the night.  My lips, at first resting over your cheek, would slowly find their way to your upper lip.  There, I would kiss you delicately as if touching fragile art.  I would then smell the nightly scent of your sleepy skin, akin to sweetened condensed milk.  My nose would slowly start to embrace yours, as your body pressed its feminine duplicity against my chest.  Your hands would slowly massage my back, while mine do the same for you, except farther down and further back.  Then, your legs and mine would play a game of chess in which we are always looking to bring each other down.

As I moved on to kissing your bottom lip, I would feel the slippery softness of your playful tongue.  It would start by touching my upper lip, and almost magically make its way to my own wet tongue, and back into your mouth, and forth into mine again, and back and forth, and forth and back.  And then, as we greeted each other’s mouths, I would roll over on top of you, while you made an orgasmic sound.  And you would make it again, many times throughout the night, until the sweat and the tiredness would take us wholly.  Back to cuddling, with me still inside you, we would fall asleep in each other’s arms, to the whispering sounds of a happy night.

What is her name, you ask?  Her name is Beauty.  Her name is Heaven.  Her name is Charm.  Her name is Sincerity, and Fun, and Courage, and all that is good and right.  Her name is a melody.  It is a sound that calms and excites, all at the same time.  Her name whispers into my ears a warm, soothing breeze that blows away all the pain in life.  At the same time, her name has a certain resonance that hits my chest like a wave of sounds, resounding and majestic thunder sounds.

Her name has a way of slipping through the ether at night and making it to my ears, and into my head.  It flows into my dreams and suddenly, all I can hear is her, all I can see is her, and all I can dream about is her.  I wake up confused to the sound of her name, not knowing whether up is down or down is up, whether the air is in or out of my lungs, and whether my eyes are open or still shut.  I lie there thinking -- no, not thinking, wishing -- that she is next to me, that I have awaken in bed next to more than just her name.

How do I feel around her?  Well, she has a way of making things right.  I can come in rage, in sadness, confused and without sight, and she will just sit there and listen, then assure me that everything will be fine.  She will make me believe it without question, as if her authority were supreme.  Her words clear all worries from my mind.  Alternatively, I can come to her happy, and excited, and exploding with pride.  She will just sit there and listen, then be as happy as I am.

She also has this way of reducing my age.  When I am around her, I feel like I am playing a game, a little kid’s game.  I enjoy every second of it, and do not seem to mind the time that elapses as it gets dark.  I almost feel like telling her, “Awwww, please don’t go! Stay a bit longer! Let’s play some more!”  That is when I realize that I am a kid again, and she, so innocent and fun, is like another kid that could spend the day playing with me.  I do not want her to leave.  I do not want this feeling to end.

Why do I not tell her how I feel and see what happens?  Because the worst that could happen is the worst that could happen: she could say no.  I do not enjoy waking up every morning thinking that she is lying next to me, just to open my eyes and swallow the bitter emptiness of my bed.  I do not get aroused seven to eight hundred times a day while thinking of her just so that later I can feel miserable because she is probably miles away.  I do not get a kick out of sitting, and standing, and jumping, and walking, and hitting the wall, and scratching my skull, and sitting and doing it all over again because I cannot for the love of God, I cannot get her out of my freaking head!  I do not love feeling stupid, or anxious, or speechless or noticeably excited when she suddenly pops up from behind just to say hi, or texts me in instant messenger saying, “Morning sunshine.”  Ugh, and I must certainly do not like the constant pressure, the daily affliction, the excruciating ticking seconds that must go by while keeping myself from bothering her too much as to avoid annoying her.

So, the worst, the absolute most catastrophic, most distressful wretchedness, the biggest torturing misfortune that could ever happen to me is for her to say no.  I am not ready, nor in a million years will I ever be ready, to take that risk.  If she said no, it would mean that the morning bitterness, the embarrassing daily erectile miseries, the nuthouse self-inflicting desperation would all have been, well, stupid.  If she said yes, all those things would still be pretty stupid, but who cares?!  If she said yes, nothing else would matter!  However, I do not know how she feels, therefore I must assume that the most probable outcome is a century-long torture brought upon a second-long “no” that would stretch my heart miles apart just to fit more pointy needles per square inch on it.  I much rather keep quiet than endure such a thing!

It is what it is, and what it is, is everything beneath the soft sheets that cover this atmospheric body.  It starts up high in the vaporized waters, where the cosmos pauses as it passes through a heavy magnetic field.  Just as it clashes with the highly energized building blocks of the universe, it sustains and retains underneath what little heat the distant yet closest star has provided in half a full spin.  Just below the flying waters and clangs from the cosmos, a more subtle gaseous layer inspires its creatures to see what's far above from up close, and what's close below from a distance.

It is what it is, and what it is, continues to be what it has set out to become.  It started small and then grew, as the solar revolutions elapsed over and over again, into gigantic tectonics that together have formed this blue morphing sphere.  A great distance divides the peaks of its highest landmarks and the bottom floors that lie and sink beneath the weight of its oceans.  Within and around, above and below, life spawns and is taken as the creatures that in it live build and destroy complete civilizations.  It withstands attacks to its nuclei, and punishes the violators of its rights with a fierce force that consumes accelerated with heat, or that brushes away all those that are smaller than it.

So what is it?  It is what it is, and what it is, is all the moves and all that sits very still underneath this cosmic shield, and above the animated magma tha flows freely through ferrous catheters.