Ghost

Tonight, my ghost came to life. At Silkyjones. Called by reggae and dancehall jams. Ah, me. Once, I was the whore of reggae joints. You should have seen me then, slave and queen of throbbing songs on dimly-lit dance floors in the company of my girl K. and strangers, being totally fine with the fact that I didn't know their names, their dreams, their sorrows, didn't know anything about them except that we were gathered to get dizzy together, happy together, to drink Jamaican tunes that carried us from the places that we lived in with the uncertainty of squatters, to those true homes in our countries, where wilting parents awaited us with the blooming hopes that we were doing better things other than partying in those strange lands they sent us to, for reasons that we didn't quite believe in any more. Ass against groin, shoulder to shoulder, hope on hope, we jammed with all we had, knowing that at least for those few sweet hours, nothing else mattered, nothing. Not the distances we had to drive or fly to get back to our lives, the cold truths to be swallowed with sobering bottles of reality when it was time to stop the music and regret, once again, that pleasure never failed to be brief. None of those things, no no no, just the lust for tunes and flight in our bodies. Yes, tonight my ghost came to life and we walked backwards, followed Lady Saw and Mr. Vegas and Shabba, cut the cemetery of time to the dancehalls of Kzoo where every so often I murdered myself with tunes.