Campers! It’s November already. It’s hard to believe it’s already time to hang up our costumes and settle in for a blissful few weeks of calm before the holiday season storm. We recommend grabbing a warm cup of detox tea, deleting any of those pesky unanswered texts you *maybe* sent to an ex, putting your phone on do not disturb, taking a sec to breathe deep (insert inhale and exhale here), and read this little piece of prose from our Denver-based pal and contributor Zach Snead. While it isn’t intentionally De Los Muertos-themed, he did write about some ghosts.
Thanks for getting lost with us.
LYLAS,
Your Misguidance Counselors, Sam & Marilyn
At the foot of the mountains, where the plains start to climb high, there’s a house where no one lives.
No bodies lay their heads down each night. Just ghosts of the former inhabitants.
They pass each other every so often and no words are exchanged. Occasional glances. That's all. What love once passed between them is withered and gone, a grapevine stuck in a desert of their younger selves.
Where once they occupied the same two beds together, they now reside in separate rooms. One of them still goes into the world, still has connections. The other is too heartbroken to move.
Silent memories carve slowly through them as the Colorado carved the Grand Canyon, grinding away, layer after layer, over the eons. They are both alone no matter who surrounds them. Neither one wanting to admit as much.
The love between them is what brought them to this place, but it is also what killed them. A love too strong can ruin the best of us no matter the intent.
Just two ghosts passing each other silently in the halls of this monument to failure. Where did it all go wrong? No one wants to say. Neither ghost really knows.
It was a season of their lives, but it had a finality to it. Seasons change. Leaves come and go on the Aspens in the high country. But when two former people find a home in each other and that home crumbles, they’re left behind without hope.
One day, they will part ways.
Maybe they will find their way back to each other. Maybe the love that burned so strongly can reignite and burn longer this time.
But then that would require the ghosts to come back from the recently deceased and find themselves again.