Ghosts

Strange days in the building where I work.

First, there was that hammering and sawing just beyond the little door to nowhere.
Then, the wooden chair that sits to the left just inside my office
apparently moved itself...
I left the office, locking it and walking away for 20 minutes or so.
Upon my return, I could not get into my office because that chair
had moved over so that about 1/2 of it was somewhat wedged in front of the door.
Inside the office.
Dunno how the hell that could happen, but it gave me the willies.
And finally, last night, 3 of my clients and I were sitting outside in our "back yard".
We all heard someone walking around just inside the building,
but when we went in - no one was there.
We double-checked all 3 floors and found nothing.
Down in the basement, where it is super-spooky (circa 1885),
there were a few areas that were just overwhelmingly...weird.
There was one area where the air seemed peculiarly 'high-altitude' -
and uncomfortable to breathe. Near by, there was a section of wall
that was oddly faded and all scratched up in a vaguely circular pattern.
When I walked by that wall, I had such an overpowering, total feeling of despair
that I almost burst into tears. My heart was pounding, I was nauseated
and all the tiny hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end.
I tried to appear calm (I was readying to leave for the night and
didn't want to abandon my herd in a state of panic) - but I felt, for a moment,
as though I was breathing another's breath, or being forcibly resuscitated
while still breathing on my own.
My face must have blanched, because the 3 women with me shouted WHAT? WHAT!
swiveling their heads around while running toward the stairs in a mad panic.
The melancholy I felt in that basement was so singular and vast
I cannot even begin to explain it.
I just knowI was disturbed by it all evening,
and the feeling lingers today.
Strange days are also upon the people living in the building.
There is much about the lives of the women I work with
that I sense, but never really see.
They struggle daily, they are haunted by their pasts -
and I, in turn, am haunted by them.
Behind the carefully arranged faces they show to the world,
each harbors a spectral child, whose face sometimes drifts forward
to gaze at out at me with such wistful longing
I feel my heart might stop.
Oh,the weight of history.
The shape of regret.

Ghosts.