grief

“They Are a Ghost” — Advent Ghosts 2023

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 7 Comments

At the end what does it all mean,

learning that what they call grief

Is simply, or not so simply, fear;

that building a story against terror is the last almost impossible thing you can try;

that God Themself is a Holy Ghost.

Do you believe?

And I say,

I believe God is a Ghost.

I believe that Ghost is also

Earth’s memory of love and life,

Earth’s reckoning with loss,

Earth’s pain over wrongdoing and betrayal.

That this Ghost walks in our presence,

Sits by our side, rests Their arm over us in fitful dreams.

At Advent.

And always.

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This is an exactly 100-word flash fiction piece for a tradition of writing ghost stories on Christmas Eve. We acknowledge a sinful and hopeless world, and welcome the dawn in full awareness that Christmas day brings us light.

Advent Ghosts 100 Word Storytelling is put on by Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall. Read the 2023 stories now, with some new stories appearing through December 22. There is still time to submit your story. Unintentionally, I wrote this story as part 3 of a trilogy: Presence; Midnight, Christian; and They Are a Ghost.

Search tag “Advent Ghosts” to read all of my 100-word stories for this project over the years on Esse Diem. Then join us!

UPDATE: My 100-Word Story links:

2011 The Escape
2012  For Later and Unwanted
2013 Vacancy
2014 The Last
2016 It's Not Mama
2018 Rattle
2019 Slide
2020 Listen
2021 Presence
2022 Midnight, Christian
2023 They Are a Ghost

Your Form It Lingers

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / Leave a comment

It’s a big fat cheat to use another creative’s words. But when they are better than your own, when they say all the things you are too afraid to say at the moment, you let them carry you. Thank you, Joan Shelley and Carter Sickels — Carter, without you I would never have found this song.

***

A spring remembered, the taste of gin

An island light upon our skin

Your form it lingers, I trace just where you’ve been

The songs we sang I’ll sing again

When it breaks down

Oh, babe, let’s try

To see the beauty in all the fading

I saw the river thick with mud

Break through the banks and run

And I confess I liked it, I cheered the flood

When the waters hit the walls and won

When it breaks down

Oh, babe, let’s try

To see the beauty in all the fading

The roads are endless, they seem to grow

Vines that wind around the world

And though I hate it to leave my home

I love that car when I need to go

When it breaks down

Oh, babe, let’s try

To see the beauty in all the fading

And old Kentucky stays in my mind

It’s sweet to be five years behind

That’s where I’ll be when the seas rise

Holding my dear friends and drinking wine

When it breaks down

Oh, babe, let’s try

To see the beauty in all the fading

When it breaks down

When the stakes get high

To see the beauty in all the fading

Joan Shelley, The Fading