Disappearing Like Vapour
Time does not move forward—
it peels.
Layer by fragile layer,
like wallpaper in an old house
where laughter once lived,
now curling in the corners,
fading beneath fingerprints
and the dust of untold decades.
I walk through this world
with a head full of ghosts—
not the kind that rattle chains
or beg to be banished,
but the soft, spectral echoes
of things that were:
a child’s shout swallowed
by an empty stairwell,
the perfume of a woman
who once danced in this room
before sorrow settled in her bones
like sediment.
We do not leave history behind—
we wear it,
woven into the lining
of every coat passed down,
every brick laid over another,
every word spoken
in the language of survival.
We are layered creatures,
each breath a palimpsest
written atop a thousand yesterdays—
moments lived and lost,
and lived again in memory’s
mournful theatre.
This world is crowded
with the unremembered:
lovers who kissed beneath bridges
now eroded by storms;
revolutionaries who died
for ideas we recite
without reverence;
children whose laughter once
reverberated in schoolyards
now repurposed
into luxury condos.
And still, the ghosts remain—
not as phantoms
but as atmosphere.
In the way a doorway holds
its breath when you enter.
In the tilt of light
on a Tuesday afternoon
that feels like déjà vu
but is really just
the past whispering:
I was here too.
Time is not linear.
It pools.
It gathers in puddles
beneath lampposts,
in stairwells,
in the hollows of oak trees
that have witnessed
more than we will ever know.
We do not outlive our moments—
they recede,
disappearing like vapour,
but not vanishing.
They rise,
formless and eternal,
into the ether of once was.
And maybe
that’s what haunts me most:
not the finality of endings,
but the ache of all that still lingers,
invisible and alive,
pressing its ghost-mouth
to my shoulder
as I walk into tomorrow
carrying every yesterday
like smoke in my lungs.
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