Imaginary Images

by Carys Kinsey
1297555051|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover (updated 1297557021|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover) | 0 comment(s)

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away.
~ William Hughes Mearns

Mearns' poem Antigonish suits me perfectly. He may have written it about a ghost, but I think it works for imaginary creations of my mind. I see things that aren't there, and I see them frequently. Less so in the last three years thanks to the medications that I'm on. Sometimes, even with the medications, I still see them. I try to ignore them. That's what the doctors would say to do, since they aren't really there anyhow. Just imaginary beings that my mind creates to fill in the empty spaces. This guy though, I see him like clockwork whenever I'm in the shop.

Every afternoon just after tea I watch him. He enters the shop. He moves to a shelf that doesn't exist. He removes a book that is non-existent. He sits in a chair in the corner and reads. The odd times I do happen to catch his eye it looks as though he's about to say something. Then someone else will enter the shop, and he'll vanish.

That is how I know he's not real. Were he real… were he corporeal… he would actually ask the question. He'd come to the counter and purchase his seemingly non-existent book. I'm tempted sometimes to attempt talking to him, but the fear of winding up back in that place is constantly there. I've been doing well these last three years and I'd rather not wind up back in the institution.

Though maybe… maybe if he talks to me like the others used to… I'll talk back.

Just to see what he wants.


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