A Friend

Funerals are terrible dirges.

People seldom smile at funerals, afraid of being assumed to be insensitive as they are. There's rarely a shred of happiness allowed in these lonely churches. Would the dead really desire such a somber situation? Those who smile do the true service to the service, being servants to savoring the soul's true stipulations.

There's a lady in the front row of the pews, here, smiling. She wears a black dress, with a brown leather overcoat, and the two toddlers at her side seem to have her semblance of appearance. The mother, unashamed of happiness - the children, unashamed of anything. She seems to be the widow, though the creases on her face show her emotion undecreased for the deceased. His face is at the front of the church, in a small frame above the coffin, resting on a simple stone pedestal.

My form rests above it all, a knave in the nave; ironic to have a ghost in the place of the heavenly host. But my form is not in heaven. Leavened on earth as I am still, my body still under earth, my soul over earth after birth but not over enough where I hover, not over enough for god to put me over, easy. Easy as death.

Egg puns. Really?

That's enough emotion for elegy.

~

The ghost's body emerged from the red brick wall of the church, passing through the 'Son of Man' in the words inscribed there in black metal – "The Son of Man Come to Seek and Save Us All". It soared up, gathering speed, and finally came to a rest 500 feet over the suburbs of Boston, observing. The city lay several miles in front of him, grey rectangular spires glittering in the setting sun like a child's haphazardly arranged building blocks.

It traveled towards it, that same sun passing through its lonely, transparent form. It flew over the outskirts of Dedham and followed the tree-lined VFW Parkway into Brookline, passing over West Roxbury Academy's greenish swampy moat. Yesterday, early in the morning darkness, it had seen two teenagers running through it nude. The ghost had followed them, intrigued, to find that it was simply young love's intrepid daring.

It continued its flight, following Route 9 through Brookline, into the outskirts of Boston. Cracked asphalt suburban roads opened themselves to two lane highways brimming with vehicles, their white and red lights like travelling eyes in the softening darkness. Once night fell, the ghost was in the midst of the lazy city.

It was nine o'clock on a Thursday, and the streets were more populated with students and late night workers than cars. Discordant laughter, yelling, and catcalls echoed between the buildings, concentrated in the neon-sign-lit theatre district and Chinatown.

The ghost flitted through here, through grey restaurant walls, through empty office cubicles, through the streets, learning gossip and intrigue, stories and fights, friendship and posturing. It grew bored, finally settling on the top of the pyramid-like Hyatt hotel across the Charles River, in Cambridge, watching the river's undulating waves reflect the white lights of the Prudential. The Citgo sign cycled up in the foreground, red, white, and blue.

~

There are always interesting people dwelling in penthouses, pent up with spent money in their own two-pence worlds. This one seemed no different from the general herd, a bird of unfine specimen from a flock who had heard the world to have hurled him ... out.

The room was brown and grey. Mahogany bed in the back, grey molded wood kitchen in the front, brown leather armchair in the middle, and a large, rectangular glass window looking over the lights of the bridge.