Specters

I left them behind—or so I believed in my delirium. I buried them beneath the marble of oblivion and sealed the crypts with the lacquer of indifference. But the ghosts of the past do not know rest. They slip once more through the cracks of consciousness, manifesting in the creak of wood at midnight or in the flicker of a candle that dies for no reason.

They are presences without faces, yet with names that burn my tongue when I try to speak them; shadows of affections I betrayed or of promises that, like shattered glass, lacerated my hands. 

Listen… do you not hear that rhythmic knocking behind the wall of time? It is the heartbeat of what was and is no longer, demanding its place in the present. The specters watch me from the dark corners of the room, hidden and full of reproach, reminding me that no one escapes their past. There is no ocean deep enough, nor nights long enough, to conceal the remains of what they once were with me.

I am the host of an eternal procession, condemned to walk among the ruins of my own deeds, while the wind outside howls at me and marks me with a sorrowful sentence.

Photography by Valeria Mar Treviño // Dev/Scan at Pantera Film Lab