The Ghost of Dead Ends
by Ceilidh (kale) Birkhahn
Late one August, I fell in love with a ghost of dead ends. End of summer; end of a decade; end of childhood. They were a girl, or maybe a skirt with a petticoat stuffed underneath, or maybe, most pathetically, they were nothing at all, a shapeless mirage of my mind grasping for stability in any way it could.
Everything about us was the dying gasp of summer. I remember vividly—fanning ourselves with hands in futile hope of a breeze, no AC, untuned piano resting precariously on an incline. Side by side, our backs towards the pathetically creaking swivel of the rusty fan. Thum-thum-thum. Dodging crickets, laughing.
I played the wheezing old piano whenever I could, so that everyone would look away from me. A keyboard is the kind of instrument that a person can disappear behind, if you’re careful about it. The ghost would watch me from the stage curtains, but the stare weighed less from under the scaffolding of the music.
When I say “love,” I am not sure love is what I mean. But there is no better word available to me to explain that unsteady admiration-codependency we found ourselves in, is there? My memory of us was a ghost of itself even as it happened, dust from the rafters settling in a spotlit halo around my premature nostalgia.
Ceilidh (kale) Birkhahn creates work at the intersection of fantasy and technology, with a focus on the overlap between human and nonhuman. They enjoy theatre, visual art, composing, whispering sweet nothings at the sky, photography, writing, and have “had a piano hobby” for over thirteen years. Aside from the arts, they also enjoy making bird noises, sweet star fruit, and pretending to be a dragon. Ceilidh can usually be found with a pen in their hand, pocket, hair—or at least somewhere in their general vicinity.